'Magnolia Table' Star Joanna Gaines Makes 'Controversial' Substitute for Traditional Recipe

Joanna Gaines is bringing more flavorful dishes in the currently-airing Season 2 of Magnolia Table, but even she admits some of her ingredients might be a little "controversial." The popular HGTV star kicked off Season 2 of her cooking show in early April, and in Episode 4 she spices things up when she serves her sour cream enchiladas, though she swaps out one important ingredient with something else.

The episode, which is now available for streaming on Discovery's new streaming service discovery+, finds Gaines visiting a local tortilla factory before heading back home to show fans how she creates the mouth-watering dish. Telling viewers that "for the Gaines family, Mexican food is our favorite" and revealing that she and her family "cook Mexican food once or twice a week," the former Fixer Upper star also said she swaps out the traditional corn tortilla with flour tortillas. The ingredient swap caused some confusion among fans, with one person commenting on a video for the episode, "she's at a corn tortillas shop and asked for flour tortillas???"

"I grabbed a handful of fresh tortillas from Jesse's today. In traditional enchiladas, sometimes it's corn tortillas but I like to use flour tortillas and it's quite controversial," Gaines says. "This is called Tex-Mex, this is called Jo-Mex. I don't know, I hate saying Tex-Mex because Texans are like, 'Don't blame us for your problems.'"

As History Today notes, enchiladas date all the way back to the preclassical period (c.2000-250 BC), when the Maya of the Yucatán Peninsula "dipped corn tortillas in pumpkin seeds, rolled them around a chopped, hard-boiled egg and then covered them in a rich tomato sauce." Over the centuries, the recipe has changed, and the current beloved enchilada of today was modernized by the Aztecs. Cheat Sheet notes that Gaines' use of flour tortillas isn't exactly out of the ordinary, as flour tortillas are commonly used for enchiladas in the Mexican states of Chihuahua, Durango, Sonora, and Sinaloa, which are close to the border with Texas, where Gaines and her family lives.

Regardless of how viewers feel about Gaines swapping out corn tortillas for her enchiladas, one thing is for sure: she's keeping it real with Magnolia Table. While most cooking shows present flawless cooking techniques and spectacular end results, Magnolia Table doesn't shy away from showing Gaines' cooking fails. In a "making of" episode of the series, Gaines said she "started feeling like, 'Oh this is not real, this is more produced'" and realized that "if I'm going to do this, it's going to be me really cooking something, start to finish. Don't stop me. If I mess up, we show it.'" Magnolia Table is available for streaming on discovery+. The series has already been renewed for Season 3.