The recipe this week caused a lot of strife in our house back in the day. Mexican casserole… if you like seasoned meat, cheese, salsa, and crunchy chips, it would just make sense that you’d like Mexican casserole. Any sane, rational person would find no reasonable argument on that point, right? I’m betting that argument could even hold up in a court of law.
May I then present to the court my 8-year-old daughter, to whom the words sane and rational could only be loosely applied to on the best of days back then. She hated it when I would make this for dinner, and it was a staple at our house. It was quick, made a lot of leftovers, and came in an easy kit that took out all the guesswork and thinking. It made my nights easier when this was on the menu, and the rest of the family loved it. Not my daughter, though. We would go round and round on this one, looking a lot like an old Calvin and Hobbes comic when they would fight over their game of Calvinball.
“Do you like tacos?” I would ask.
“Yes!” she would answer.
“Do you like corn chips, melted cheese, and salsa?” I would then ask.
“Of course I do!” she would respond.
“So then you like my Mexican casserole, because it’s all those ingredients, just in casserole form!” I would exclaim, confident in my victory.
“No, it’s disgusting! I’m making a PB&J sandwich!” she would respond back.
I would then rub my face and sigh, thinking of a way to reason with her, then deciding I might as well be using logic on a King Cobra hissing in my face. No matter how much I try to tell the snake we are all cool and it can totally just have the field and I’m going to leave immediately, it’s still just going to bite me in the face.
The thing is, as much as I hate to admit now, she was partly right. While any form of taco based foods pretty much follows the same flavor profiles and textures, what I was serving was actually disgusting. She just wasn’t right on the reasons for her thinking, although now I think I would hate the taste of that boxed dinner as well. Mexican casserole is just too easy to make to rely on a boxed kit full of questionable ingredients, lab made preservatives, and nuclear orange colored oils masquerading as cheese. I won’t even bother listing the ingredients on this box kit, because it would take up the entire length of the article, but the “cheese” portion of the kit starts with water and canola/soybean oil. That tells you all you need to know about the quality of mass produced, shelf stable packaged foods.
The first ingredients in cheese should be… well… milk and cheese cultures… if it says anything else, put it down and run for the border, as the old Taco Bell commercial used to say. The good thing about making my recipe for Mexican casserole is you can eat it and still actually run for the border, whereas the only place you’re running after eating an oil based “cheese like” substance is to the bathroom, or eventually the ER to have a stent or two put in.
There are a couple of specific brands I use in this recipe that I usually only find at Whole Foods, especially the cheese dip and salsa. You can certainly make your own white queso at home, but I’m trying to stick to the heart of the idea of a quick and easy healthy dinner here, and this cheese dip fits the bill. Do not just grab any old jar of dip from the mega-market, as most of those have ingredients just as bad as the boxed kit. And no matter what, making a cheese dip using Velveeta is not healthy or even cheese. I have a recipe for making a homemade and healthy version of Velveeta style cheese for Chicken Spaghetti, but that’s another article for another time. I use Leigh Oliver’s brand white queso for this dinner now, and not only is it clean, but it’s the best tasting store bought cheese dip I have found. I will share the ingredients for this since it’s short and sweet, like all lists should read:
Pasteurized white natural cheese (milk, cheese cultures, enzymes, water, cream sodium phosphate, salt), filtered water, green chiles, roasted jalapenos, nonfat dry milk (dry milk, lactose, Vitamin A palmitate, Vitamin D3), cumin, granulated garlic, salt, natural flavor.
See, not an oil or chemical in sight there. That’s as close to homemade as you are going to get. As for the chips, the only brand I’ve found that passes both my high standards for both taste and health are Beanitos brand black bean chips. These can be found at the mega-marts, so stock up and keep around for healthy light snacking. I challenge you to find any other bag of chips in a store with this short of an ingredient list:
Whole Black Beans, Pure Sunflower Oil, Long Grain Rice, Natural Flavor, Sea Salt.
Here’s the recipe. I like to combine it with some Mexican cauliflower rice and roasted broccoli spiced up with red pepper flakes. I also garnish the casserole with diced avocado, cilantro, and plain grass fed greek yogurt mixed with lemon or lime juice. Would my daughter still argue about me with this version? Probably. The next time she gets leave from the Navy and comes home, I’m going to make it and put it to the test.
Mexican Casserole
Ingredients:
- Beanitos brand black bean chips
- Leigh Oliver’s white queso cheese dip
- 1 lb ground turkey (pasture raised preferably)
- 1 yellow onion, diced
- 1 package baby bella mushrooms, sliced
- 1 jar Green Mountain Gringo medium heat salsa
- 1/2 teaspoon sea salt
- Fresh ground pepper to taste
- 1/2 teaspoon onion and garlic powder
- 1 Tbsp cumin and chili powder
- 4 oz shredded grass fed Mont. Jack cheese
Instructions:
Brown the ground turkey over medium heat with sea salt and pepper. Cook until almost done and add diced mushrooms and onions to cook until soft and onions are translucent. Drain any rendered fat from the meat mixture, return to the pan and add garlic, onion, cumin and chili powder to the meat, then add the jar of salsa to the pan. Stir to combine and simmer over low heat:
Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Spray a large casserole dish with non stick spray and add a layer of black bean chips to the dish:
Spoon half the meat mixture on top of the chips:
Heat the jar of the cheese dip in the microwave until it’s loose enough to stir and pour. Pour half the jar of cheese dip on top of the meat:
Then repeat the layers again, Chips, then the rest of the meat, then the rest of the cheese dip. Cover the last cheese dip layer with more chips, then spread the shredded Mont. Jack cheese over the top chips layer:
Bake for 20 minutes and then let cool for at least 5 minutes:
Serve with cheesy Mexican Cauliflower rice and spicy broccoli, and garnish with lemon greek yogurt sauce, diced avocado, and cilantro.
See the list of the Shirtless Chef recipes at www.mysaline.com/shirtless.