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You want a tasty meal that won’t be too hard to cook that your family will love. This hearty family-friendly dish combines beef, corn, salsa, and cheese. It comes together so quickly that you won’t spend much time in the kitchen.
I don’t know about you, but to me, there’s nothing worse than spending hours in the kitchen. Maybe the only thing worse is cooking something that nobody in the family will eat. This recipe for beef and corn casserole with pepper jack cheese is flavorful and easy—the best of all worlds.
Corn Casserole Recipe
Corn has been a staple in American diets for centuries. That’s for good reason: the tasty sweetness of the corn adds filling bulk. Both a grain and a vegetable, corn is a great addition to your diet.
This recipe combines corn with lean meat, zesty salsa, creamy sour cream, and topped with cheese. The mixture of the bubbling cheese and the salsa gives it a flavorful bit of spice, but the sour cream cools it down. You can use mild salsa if your family doesn’t like a lot of heat.
If you want to give this corn casserole more of Southern flair, you can always add a half-stick of butter and package of corn muffin mix to the recipe. The butter will make it creamy and the corn muffin mix will make it like it has a crust on the bottom. The cheese layer on top is just a delicious bonus.
Cheesy Corn Casserole
Cheesy corn casserole brings together all of your favorite flavors and only uses two dishes to make it. First, you brown the beef in one pan. Then you add the beef to the other ingredients in another pan and bake it in the oven.
That means that not only won’t you spend much time cooking, but you also won’t spend much time cleaning up, either. I can’t speak for anyone else, but doing dishes is my least favorite part of cooking. If I could hire a chef or a dishwasher, I think I would rather have a dishwasher! Easy recipes like this keep me out of the kitchen for as long—or make it so that I can enlist someone else in the family to do the dishes for me.
This recipe is a winner for so many reasons. It’s delicious exactly as is. But one of the best things about it is that it can accommodate many different dietary restrictions. The recipe itself is gluten-free if your family is one of the many that has someone following a gluten-free diet.
You can even make this recipe vegetarian by using veggie crumbles by Boca or Morningstar Farms. Keeping the beef out of the recipe makes it lower-fat as well. You can also make it lower in fat in calories not only by using the vegetarian crumbles but also by using the light sour cream as described and using low-fat cheese.
This recipe could have more vegetables added without it significantly changing the flavor. I don’t know about you, but I’m always looking for ways to get my kids to eat more veggies. You could add chopped onions and green bell peppers. You could add a can of diced tomatoes with green chilies as well.
Casseroles make a perfect dinner because they’re so easy to make. There are enough ingredients to make sure that everyone gets enough to eat. Even if your kids are like mine and pick out a certain ingredient, they still get enough from the other ingredients.
Easy, cheap, and filling: what more could you want from dinner?
If you enjoyed this recipe, make sure to check out our Cheesy Stuffed Meatballs and Spaghetti and our Chili Mac.
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Beef and Corn Casserole with Pepper Jack Cheese
- Total Time: 40 minutes
Ingredients
- 2 teaspoons olive oil
- 1¼ pounds lean ground beef or chuck
- 1½ cups jarred salsa
- 1 cup frozen white corn, kept frozen until ready to use
- 1½ cups shredded pepper Jack or Monterey Jack cheese
- ½ cup light sour cream
- Salt and freshly ground black pepper
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 375°F.
- Heat the oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat.
- Add the beef and cook for 5 minutes, until browned, breaking up the meat as it cooks.
- Drain away any fat from the bottom of the pan.
- Season the beef with salt and freshly ground black pepper.
- Stir in salsa, corn, 1 cup of the cheese and the sour cream.
- Mix well and transfer the mixture to a shallow baking dish.
- Top the beef mixture with remaining ½ cup of cheese. 9. Bake for 20 to 25 minutes, until the cheese is golden brown and bubbly.
- Prep Time: 15 Minutes
- Cook Time: 25 Minutes
- Category: Main Course
- Method: Baking
- Cuisine: American
Keywords: corn casserole recipe, cheesy corn casserole