Easy Tex-Mex Cabbage Casserole

This recipe is light and loaded with vegetables, yet filling enough to substitute for your next Taco Tuesday that the whole family will love. This is not your typical low-carb cabbage casserole, and it’s extremely easy and cheesy!

There’s something about this time of year that makes me want to cook soups, casseroles, and hearty, re-heatable meals on repeat. It might be the cooler weather rolling in or the fact that the evenings are getting darker earlier, but whatever it is … I’m here for it.

We have a well-loved “Taco Tuesday” theme in our house, and we will most likely gravitate towards tacos, a taco salad, burritos or burrito bowls, fajitas, or something that satisfies the craving for food with a Mexican flare on a weekly basis.

This week, however, I went completely rogue and had a goal to make some sort of dish that used up the majority of the ingredients I had leftover from making soup and mix-and-match meals from the week before. With almost a whole head of cabbage staring at me, I knew I wanted to use it as a main ingredient and spice up the typical pairings in cabbage casseroles.

The cool thing is that you can totally customize this recipe to your liking and switch up the vegetables, meats, or both. I used ground beef, peppers, onions, zucchini, celery, stewed tomatoes, and, of course, cabbage. I would like to make it again with chicken (shredded chicken would be awesome!), chicken sausage, or ground turkey to taste the difference. You could also add swap out some of the vegetables I chose for things like carrots, cauliflower, or spinach.

Or hey, get crazy and just add all the things. It’s really up to you!

Once I had the ingredients I wanted, I really just made it up as I went and ended up layering the meat on the bottom and then the vegetables and cheese on repeat like you do when making lasagna.

I incorporated taco seasoning to flavor the meat, but only used half of the packet while browning it and saved the other half to layer with the vegetables and cheese throughout the casserole. That really added a kick of spice and flavor!

If you would prefer to skip the packaged seasoning, you could make your own by mixing the key spices together: chili powder, cumin, garlic powder, paprika, dried oregano, salt and pepper, and crushed red pepper flakes. Here’s a full recipe and breakdown that I’ve tried before.

Enjoy the dish as is, add in a starch like rice or diced potatoes (although I really don’t think you miss it as is), and/or serve with a side of corn tortilla chips!

I have a husband who can cook and create recipes really well, so he isn’t always easiest judge of new recipes that I throw together. That said, I think it’s important to note that he thought this one was fantastic. He went for seconds the night I cooked it and we all went to town on the leftovers over a bed of chips for Cabbage Casserole Nachos the next day.

This was a true family win!

The recipe yields 6-8 servings and couldn’t be easier to make. It took about 10-15 minutes to prep my vegetables and then 45 minutes to cook for a total of an hour from start to finish.

Here’s the recipe!

(Simply right-click the photo above to save, pin, or print the recipe.)

And if you like the looks of this one, you also need to try my Lightened-Up Mexican Casserole. It’s similar, but also different enough to be able to make the next Taco Tuesday after this one. (I’ve got you my friend!)

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Please let me know if you give any of the recipes featured on this blog a try. I’d love to hear your thoughts, and please let me know if you tweak anything so we can all hear about the variations and get different ideas.

Thanks for clicking over today and see ya back here for Friday Favorites!