Chicken Tamale Pie

So I've played around with Pinterest like everybody else in the world. My main focus has been on food (of course). There are so many desserts that are posted I try and find savory dishes. Mainly because I want to pin stuff I might make and as much as I love dessert, I don't make it very often.

So I was going through my pins and found this recipe. It just looked comforting from the picture.

Chicken Tamale Pie

Author: Tracy adapated from Pinch of Yum, adapted from Cooking Light

Prep time: 15 mins

Cook time: 30 mins

Total time: 45 mins

Serves: 8

Ingredients

• 1/3 cup fat free milk
• 1/4 cup liquid egg 
• 1 1/2 tablespoon taco seasoning, divided
• 1/4 teaspoon ground red pepper
• 1 (14 3/4 ounce) can cream-style corn
• 1 (8.5 ounce) box corn muffin mix (such as Jiffy)
• 1 (4 ounce) can chopped green chiles, drained
• 1 (10 ounce) can red enchilada sauce 
• 2 cups shredded cooked turkey breast
• 3/4 cup shredded cheese (I used a colby/monterrey jack blend)

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 400°.
2. Combine the first 7 ingredients (milk through green chiles), using just 1/2 tablespoon of the taco seasoning, in a large bowl, stirring just until moist. Pour mixture into a round pie plate (mine was glass) coated with cooking spray.
3. Bake at 400° for 20-30 minutes. While corn is baking, toss the chicken in the remaining 1 tablespoon taco seasoning. When corn is done – it will be just barely set and golden brown – pierce entire surface liberally with a fork (it might stick a little bit to the fork). Pour enchilada sauce over top. Top with chicken; sprinkle with cheese. Bake at 400° for 15 minutes or until cheese melts. Remove from oven; let stand 5 minutes. 

So I used turkey instead of chicken since I had a frozen cooked breast in the freezer and I'm all for using what you got. Make sure you use a deep dish pie plate, otherwise you are going to flow over. The corn mixture cooks to the top of a deep dish. I wondered how I was going to get the sauce/turkey/cheese on it without a mess but it worked. I did cook it on a cookie sheet for the last part because I was afraid of spillover.

If you like tamales you will probably like this. The corn mixture turns sort of into the mushiness I associate with tamales. It had a kick to it but not overpowering.

We liked it but probably won't make it into our regular rotations. Just not special enough for us. But still tasty and lots of leftovers. I don't think they will freeze well though so we'll be eating it to finish it up.

Creamy Burrito Casserole

So this week's new recipe was to help fix our Mexican food need. Most of these ingredients are easily found in my house. I just needed to make sure and get some sour cream while at the store. We found the recipe at food.com. It definitely lived up to its name of creamy. We made it in a 2 quart rectangle casserole dish. It filled it to the top. It will probably feed us 3-4 times. I'll keep this recipe because it is enough different some others that we already have. And very easy to make.


Creamy Burrito Casserole

1 lb ground beef or ground turkey

1/2 medium onion chopped

1 package of taco seasoning

6 large flour tortillas

1 can refried beans

2-3 cups shredded cheese (cheddar or taco mix)

1 can cream of mushroom soup

4 ounces sour cream

jarred hot sauce if you want spicy

1. Brown ground meat and onion, drain if necessary

2. Add taco seasoning and mix in refried beans

3. Mix sour cream and soup in separate bowl

4. Spread 1/2 of soup mixture in casserole dish

5. Tear up 3 tortillas and spread over soup mixture

6. Put 1/2 of meat mixture over tortillas

7. Add a layer of cheese

8. You can add hot sauce now

9. Repeat layers

10. Sprinkle cheese over top and bake uncovered 20-30 minutes at 350 degrees

Definitely make sure you have enough meat for the top layer otherwise your tortillas will get a lot of heat and be extra crunchy. We used 3 cups of cheese because we like things cheesy. We also made the casserole the night before and refrigerated it before cooking it before we ate. I think that worked well but it needed the full 30 minutes to warm up (even after we had let it sit out awhile to try to get to room temperature). 

Served with extra sour cream and salsa but necessary