I’ve had a notion to beef tacos for a few days now, and came across extra large pasta shells in Tesco this week. It gave me the idea for pasta shells stuffed with taco beef and cheese. Not exactly going to win any nutritional awards but every once in a while it’s nice to indulge. And if you serve it with a green salad then at least it’s not all that bad!
You’ll need:
450g steak mince beef
2 onions, finely chopped
2 green peppers, finely chopped
1 x tin chopped tomatoes
300g Conchiglioni Rigati (extra large pasta shells)
1 mozzarella ball, grated
200g cheddar cheese, grated
200ml tub of sour cream
For the Taco seasoning, you’ll need:
1 tbsp chilli powder
1tsp ground cumin
1 tsp sea salt
1 tsp black pepper, crushed
1/2 tsp corriander
1/2 tsp dried oregano
1/2 tsp garlic powder
1/2 tsp onion powder
1/4 tsp paprika
1/4 tsp crushed chilli flakes
1. Start by frying off your beef and put a large pan of water on to boil. Add a splash of olive oil and a generous pinch of salt, and bring to the boil. Once your meat had been browned, add all the taco seasonings and fry for another 2 minutes. Add the onions, peppers and tinned tomatoes. Cook for approx 30 minutes.
2. Once the water has come to the boil add the pasta and cook for approx. 7 minutes. You want the shells to still be a little hard as they’ll continue to cook in the oven. When ready drain in a colander, pop back into the saucepan with a drizzle of olive oil to stop them sticking.
3. Using a teaspoon, spoon the beef mixture into the pasta shells and lay in a ovenproof roasting dish. You want them fairly tightly packed into the dish. I needed two dishes for the quantities listed above. In a separate bowl, mix the sour cream with 150g of the cheddar and most of the grated mozzarella. Add a little salt and pepper and mix well. Spread the mixture equally over the filled pasta shells.
4. Bake in an oven preheated to 180 for approx 20 minutes until the cheese is bubbling, If you’ve made these in advance and they were in the fridge as mine were they may need a little longer in the oven.
5. We had ours with a tenderstem brocolli and sugar snap salad drenched in a balsamic dressing.
Enjoy!
