This recipe has all the good stuff with added vegetables and ground turkey for a lighter, tasty option for Mexican night in your home. Enjoy!
There’s something about quarantine life that has encouraged me to make casseroles. I don’t know if it’s the amount of food you get from the dish, the lack of clean up you have to do (for days), or a combination of both, but I have been alllll about them lately. Anybody else?
We do our fair share of themed nights in our home, and I love being able to look forward to something on a specific night. We’ve been gravitating towards meals with a Mexican flare on Tuesdays (Taco Tuesday!) and Italian on Fridays, and I don’t see that changing anytime soon.
You can get creative with this recipe and add all the toppings to serve, too! I pictured this one in a hurry as my family was hungry and waiting for it (whoops), but I would have loved to offer sides like shaved lettuce, avocado, black olives, and a few sprinkles of cilantro on top.

I’m really digging the crunchy texture of this dish, as I incorporated a few requests from my husband along the way. I opted for brown rice as a base, but you could use quinoa, noodles, or even veggie noodles to sneak some goodness in there.

He specifically requested crumbled up corn tortilla chips on top, but don’t tell him that I was going to do that anyways … because yum.

This casserole makes excellent leftovers! Heat it up on its own, layer over a bed of spinach or lettuce with extra toppings for a taco salad (tomatoes, avocado, cherry tomatoes, olives, and salsa and/or plain Greek yogurt for dressing!), or go all out and start with a layer of corn tortilla chips and top it with salsa and extra cheese for nachos.
This recipe yields 6-8 servings, so you can get really creative here!

All you need to get going is your starch of choice (I chose rice as my family doesn’t like quinoa as much as I do — but that would have been my preference), lean ground turkey, a taco seasoning mix (Trader Joe’s is my fave), fresh bell peppers, onion, a couple of garlic cloves, black beans, corn, a can of RO-TEL tomatoes (any flavor you fancy), cheese, salt and pepper, and a little olive oil.
Definitely start cooking your rice before anything else, as mine took about 45 minutes to prepare. Once you’ve got that done the whole recipe takes 30 minutes or less!

Set the rice aside, cook the meat, and then soften the fresh vegetables.

Finally, add in the beans, corn, tomatoes, rice, and half of the cheese to stir for a few minutes. Once it’s melted, transfer everything to a 9×13 baking dish and top with the rest of the cheese!
This is where I wish I added the cilantro, as it would have made for prettier pictures. It’s a go-to in our house, but I didn’t have any on hand for this one. If you have lime accessible, go ahead and slice one and give it a good squeeze on top, too.
I just love a good cilantro-lime zest!

(Simply right-click the photo above to save, pin, or print the recipe.)
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 leave a comment with one of your go-to casserole recipes that you think I should try. I’d love the inspo!
Thanks for checking in today and chat soon.
Happy Monday!

Leave a Reply