My grandmother likes to make stuffed taco shells, which are basically just those giant shell noodles stuffed with a mix of taco meat, salsa, cheese and black olives, covered in cheese and baked. I reverse engineered that recipe on the fly to fit things my roommate and I already had on hand for the most part and to fit our individual tastes and my roommate was actually the one who said it was basically a taco casserole at that point so that's what I've decided to call it. We are simple people, we like our food without too many frills, but I'll include instructions if you want to add more ingredients or make it fancy too.
You'll Need The Following;
Your meat can be anything you like, I used ground beef because it's what we had but ground turkey or diced chicken would also be good here. Even fish or shrimp if you want a seafood taco taste.
The pasta should be anything not regular spaghetti or angel hair pasta. Spirals are what we had on hand, but bow ties or small/medium shells or whatever else is perfect.
Basically you need 6 cups of shredded cheese, and here in the US they come in 2 cup bags. We used a mix of 4 cups taco blend and 2 cups mozzarella because again, it's what we had on hand. Any cheese that goes well with tacos is what you want to use here.
Our taco seasoning has made an appearance before, and it is running a bit low, but you don't need that fancy stuff if you can't afford it. The regular little packets at the store will do, as long as you calibrate enough spice for a pound of meat.
You can also add extra salsa, black olives, sour cream, avocado, peppers, or whatever else you like. But like I said, my roommate and I like our food simple so we don't use that, but I'll still tell you where to add those things along the way.
Now on to the first step - preheat your oven. 415 degrees Fahrenheit does the trick.
Then go ahead and precook your meat and pasta. Boil the pasta until it's the way you like it then strain and set aside. Cook up your meat and add the seasoning. Ours says to add extra water in with the seasoning and let it cook a bit longer until most of the water is gone but I don't drain the ground beef because that's where all the flavor is, so the melted grease is enough moisture to make up for it and mix all the spice in without too much problem.
Mix together your pasta, meat, and 4 cups of your cheese. If you're adding things like black olives, salsa, or peppers do it now and make it into one big mixed bag of everything.
Next, put it in a pan. I'd normally use our 13x9 but it's currently being used up housing the brownies I made on Thursday so I used two 9x9 pans instead. Just make sure your pans are greased however you like before you put the stuff in them, or else it'll stick like heck when you try to get it out after it's been baked ):
Put your remaining 2 cups of cheese (or 1 cup per pan if you're using 2 pans like me) over the top and stick it in your now preheated oven for 20 minutes.
Remove from the oven and let cool a bit before serving. If you want to put avocado slices or lettuce or something on top of each piece do that just before you serve it, and it's good served with guacamole or sour cream to sort of mix in with it.
Now like I said, this was originally meant for shells and you can do it that way too. The only difference is that you'd cook the big shells up and stuff the taco mixture inside, then layer them in a pan and cover with cheese before baking at the same temp and the same time.
My roommate also suggested a lasagna-type thing might be good with this. Basically make up your filling minus the pasta, cook up lasagna noodles, and do the typical lasagna layering of noodles, filling, cheese and repeat until you get to the top.
But any way you slice it, this stuff is good and I love making it. A nice change from typical tacos and more filling because of the added pasta. If you make two pans like I did the second pan also freezes well, and all you have to do is rebake at the same temp and time once it's been thawed to room temperature and it tends to come out just fine so you can get nice leftovers out of it ^^
Banner was made by me in Photoshop. All other pictures here were taken by me specifically for this post. I have been a home cook for over a decade, and any questions or comments about this recipe are encouraged!
If you like this content resteems, upvotes and comments are much appreciated <3
