I try really hard to maintain themes for dinner each week: Meatless Monday, Taco Tuesday, sandwiches/leftovers on Wednesday, pasta on Thursday, pizza on Friday, eat out on Saturday and crock pot on Sunday.
This helps to focus my thinking at 4:59pm every day when I think, “Hmmm…what’s for dinner?”
My favorite night of each week is always Taco Tuesday – hello, we live in Texas. But tacos every week can get a little boring. So I was trying to come up with some kid friendly recipes that were still in the Mexican category and I hit on this Taco Pasta Bake (which I admit…I usually hate my own cooking, but this was realllly good..LOL)
My kids are pretty picky eaters so when making a one dish meal like this I usually give them all of the items individually on a plate and then mix it up for my husband and myself…hopefully you don’t have to deconstruct all of your recipes like I do!
Also feel free to experiment with other ingredients…if you’re kids don’t like black beans, try red beans. And if they don’t like spicy, leave out the salsa (although I don’t like spicy either so I buy mild salsa…it just added extra flavor with very little spicy.)
Taco Pasta Bake
This is the perfect kid friendly recipes to spice up Taco Tuesday.
Ingredients
- 1 pound ground beef (I try to buy grass-fed when possible)
- 1 bag of egg noodles
- 1 cup of mild salsa
- 1 cup of shredded Mexican style cheese
- 1 package of taco seasoning (again I buy mild here)
- 2/3 cup of water
- 1 can of corn
- 1 can of black beans
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
- Cook the egg noodles according to the package.
- Brown the ground beef and cook according to seasoning package.
- Grease a 3 quart glass casserole dish.
- Spread the cooked egg noodles evenly across the bottom of dish.
- Spread the browned ground beef evenly on top of the noodles.
- Spread the black beans and corn evenly across the ground beef.
- Spread the salsa evenly and sprinkle cheese across all.
- Place in preheated oven and cook for 12-15 minutes or until cheese is completely melted.
- Allow to cool for 5 minutes before serving.
This Taco Pasta Bake recipe is very similar to my Easy Mexican Casserole recipe…that one uses rice instead of noodles.
Follow my Taco Tuesday Pinterest board for more fun recipes ideas.
Looking for more kid friendly dinner recipes?
What’s your favorite Taco Tuesday meal?
