Baked Tacos

We love tacos around here, but my biggest complaint about them is that I hate setting out 10 different taco fillings on the table.  It makes for longer preparation, longer cleanup, and a lot less room at the table.  Baked tacos seemed like a great remedy for this, so I gave them a try.  Here's the recipe:

Ingredients:
2lbs ground beef
4 teaspoons dried minced onion
3 teaspoons chili powder
1 teaspoon cornstarch
1 teaspoon garlic powder
1 teaspoon ground cumin
½ teaspoon dried oregano
1/8 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1 (8 ounce) can tomato sauce
1 (16 ounce) can refried beans
2 cups shredded Colby-jack cheese
18-20 hard taco shells
Optional Condiments-
lettuce (shredded)
tomato (diced)
Salsa
Guacamole
Cooking Instructions:
Step 1: Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.  In a small bowl combine dried minced onion, chili powder, cornstarch, garlic powder, cumin, oregano, and cayenne pepper. Mix well and set aside.
Step 2: In a large skillet brown ground beef over medium-high heat. Drain off any excess liquid. Add refried beans, tomato sauce, and prepared taco seasoning. Mix well.
Step 3: Spoon the taco meat mixture into the taco shells and place into a 9 x 13 inch baking dish, standing up. Sprinkle cheese over the top of the taco meat in each shell. Place into the oven and bake at 400 degrees for 10-12 minutes or until the cheese has melted and the tacos are heated through. Remove from the oven and top with any optional condiments for serving.
(Makes 8-10 Servings)

Okay, so this recipe makes a LOT of tacos, so since I was feeding only me and my husband, I halved it.  (Definitely a good choice).  I also skipped adding all those spices and just threw in some low sodium taco seasoning from the store.  SO much easier.  Because of this, I ended up just cooking the meat and then throwing in the beans, tomato sauce, and seasoning, scooping it into the taco shells, adding the cheese, and baking them.  Super easy.  I didn't even add anything to them (tomatoes, olives, etc) and they were still great.  NOT quite as good as a custom-made taco, but pretty close... and the ease of making them plus the ease of the cleanup more than made up for it.  My husband was a huge fan as well and loved not having to put together a bunch of tacos.  I did put out some hot sauce for us to add to the tacos, but that was basically no extra work whatsoever.

When I make them in the future, I might cut up some tomatoes and lettuce and put some sour cream on the table as well so that there will be a bit more variety, but that's pretty easy to do.

Oh, and these would make for GREAT party food.  Seriously.  Guests can just pick up a taco and move on to other food.  Pretty cool.


Baked Tacos Baked Tacos Reviewed by Carly on 10:45:00 AM Rating: 5

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