Perfect for a quick and easy weeknight dinner, this taco pie is packed with all your favorite Tex-Mex flavors. There’s chili and garlic ground beef, pinto beans, fire roasted tomatoes and corn, and elote seasoned corn chips and cheddar jack cheese. It’s hearty, filling, and super tasty!
This is an easy recipe so if you wanted to jump straight down to the recipe card, you won’t catch any judgement from me! If you have an ingredient or recipe question after reading that, just hop back to the post below for more details.
Making the Corn and Ground Beef Taco Filling
Aside from beef broth or water, you can see everything you’ll need in the photo above. If you don’t keep many spices in your cabinet, feel free to use a packet of taco seasoning. And if you’ve made my creamy taco soup, you know that a little ranch seasoning is never a bad idea to sprinkle in with taco seasoning.
Another nice addition would be a little roasted garlic. Check out our Traeger smoked twice baked potatoes or air fryer roasted garlic for two ways to make it. And speaking of the Traeger, our smoked chili would be awesome for corn chip pies.
If you can’t find frozen fire roasted corn, any frozen corn will do. But feel free to use some fresh sweet corn since I’m writing this in peak season.
You can really add in all kinds of things to make this corn chip taco pie your own.
Since everything is going in together for a quick stint in the oven, you don’t have to worry about getting the filling to the perfect consistency. About 5 minutes should do the trick. As long as there’s not too much liquid, you’ll be fine.
Assembling the Corn Chip Pie
The elote corn chip dippers from Trader Joe’s are next level good. They’re worth the trip to TJ’s on their own. If you can’t get your hands on them, any corn chip will work fine. To match the favor, you could make homemade everything but the elote seasoning.
Maybe it’s the Kinda Healthy Recipes spilling over, but I resisted the urge to add a second layer of cheese between the top corn chip and beef layer. If you wanted to add another 2-4 ounces in the middle, that would be a smart move.
Freshly shredded cheese is always best practice when it comes to getting perfectly melty cheese, but sometimes you just need to hit the easy button. And for those occasions, I like using Tillamook’s shredded cheese. It still melts really well for pre-shredded cheese.
All right, I think that’ll do it. If you have a question I didn’t cover, drop it in the comments below. And when you try this elote corn chip pie and love it, we always appreciate recipe reviews!
Elote Corn Chip Pie
Ingredients
- 1 pound Ground Beef, 96/4
- 2 Tablespoons Chili Powder
- 1 Tablespoon Garlic Powder
- ½ Tablespoon Ground Cumin
- ½ Tablespoon Onion Powder
- 1 can (15oz) Pinto Beans
- 1 can (15oz) Fire Roasted Crushed Tomatoes
- 1 cup (144g) Frozen Corn
- ½ cup Beef Broth or Water
- 10 oz bag Corn Chips*
- 4 oz Shredded Cheddar Jack
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 400ºF.
- Brown and fully cook the ground beef in a large skillet.
- Add the spices, beans, corn, tomatoes, and beef broth. Stir everything together and cook until little liquid remains, about 5 minutes. Remove from the heat and salt to taste.
- Pour half the corn chips into a baking dish, followed by the beef mixture. Repeat for a second layer and top with shredded cheese.
- Bake for 10-15 minutes or until the cheese is fully melted.
- Serve with chopped cilantro, sour cream and Greek yogurt, pickled jalapeño slices, and lime wedges, if desired.
I made this for a potluck party and it was a hit!
However I just didn’t bake the chips into the taco pie, I simply had chips on the side to dip.
I also threw in a lot of scallions, some oregano and parsley as well for more fragrance.
Hard to beat the crispy chips. We caught ourselves baking them in the pie AND serving with chips. Oops!
This is delicious if you love tacos….I’ve added salsa instead of crushed tomatoes and it’s just as good! Best part easy to make!
At the end to elevate this recipe I add some hot sauce for the extra kick of flavor.
Hot sauce is always the right move. Nice addition!
What’s the serving size for this recipe? Thanks!
I didn’t get weights for individual servings, just divided it into 6 equally sized portions in the dish. Sorry!
So my family and I don’t like tomatoes. Could I use tomato paste?
You might try tomato sauce or maybe even red enchilada sauce.