Ground Beef Enchiladas

Every morning I have an idea of what I want to make for dinner that night, and then take out a meat to defrost during the day while I'm at work. So I decided I wanted to make enchiladas a few days ago and took out ground beef. Come to find out, while searching for a recipe online, most enchilada's are made with chicken! Obviously I don't know much about Mexican cuisine. So when I got home I just threw a few things together and my ground beef "enchiladas" came out great! They were really easy to make, a very quick clean-up and overall a very pleasing weeknight meal. Keep in mind that I hate spicy food, so these were very mild. If you like a lot of spice, chopped jalepenos would be great in this.

Ingredients
1 lb ground beef
1 medium-large onion, chopped
1 taco seasoning packet
1 oz. cream cheese
6 flour tortilla's (or more if you want)
1 cup instant white rice
1 can enchilada sauce
Mexican shredded cheese
water

Directions
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In a small saucepan, bring 1 cup of salted water to a boil. Add instant rice, stir briefly, cover and set aside. In a large sautee pan, brown ground beef until cooked through and crumbled. Drain fat if necessary. Add chopped onion and cook with beef until onion is tender, about 10 minutes. Then add taco seasoning packet and however much water it calls for on the packet. Mine called for 3/4 cup. Stir until the sauce is well combined. Add cream cheese and stir until melted and mixed in with the ground beef, about another 5 minutes. Then add your cooked instant rice and 2 tbsp of enchilada sauce to the ground beef mixture and stir until everything is combined.

On a seperate plate, lay out your tortilla's. In the center of each tortilla, add ground beef/rice mixture. You can make them as full as you want. Fold them up and place into a greased 13x9 baking dish. Once you have all of your enchilada's in the baking dish, cover them with the rest of the enchilada sauce. Top with Mexican shredded cheese, and cover with foil. Bake for 20 minutes, then remove the foil and bake for an additional 10 minutes. Enjoy!

Chicken Enchilada Casserole

Last week I knew I was going to have a busy week ahead of me, so I found this easy recipe on http://www.pillsbury.com/ and got the ingredients for a week night "no time to cook" emergency. Well, last night happened to be that night! After a long meeting after work and horrible traffic, DH and I got home late so I whipped up this meal.

It was surprisingly good! I had my doubts with canned soup, instant rice etc. but the flavor was there and it was very hearty. I think this meal was perfect what it was...a "no time to cook" emergency.
Some changes I made were:

1) I used venison instead of Chicken

2) I used motzerella instead of Cheddar! I know, how odd. But it was all I had and it was ok...I'd definately use cheddar next time though!

3)When layering, I used a new layer of tortilla each time with refried beans.

4)Instead of making a round casserole, I did it in a square pan.

5) I used about 4oz. of cream cheese instead of one!

6) Did not use red bell pepper...I don't like them!

INGREDIENTS
1 boneless skinless chicken breast, cut into thin bite-size strips
1/2 medium red bell pepper, finely chopped
1/4 teaspoon ground cumin
1 can (18.5 oz) Progresso® Light Southwestern-style vegetable soup
1/4 cup uncooked instant brown rice
1 oz fat-free cream cheese, cut into cubes
3 tablespoons Old El Paso® fat-free refried beans (from 16-oz can)
4 corn tortillas (6 inch)
1/3 cup shredded reduced-fat mild Cheddar cheese

DIRECTIONS
1. Heat oven to 350°F. In 12-inch nonstick skillet, cook chicken and bell pepper over medium-high heat 4 to 6 minutes, stirring constantly, until chicken begins to brown and bell pepper is crisp-tender. Sprinkle with cumin.
2. Stir in soup. Heat to boiling. Stir in rice; reduce heat to low. Cover; cook about 10 minutes or until rice is tender.
3. Stir cream cheese into chicken mixture until well blended. Spread 1 tablespoon of the refried beans on 1 tortilla; place, beans side up, in bottom of ungreased 1-quart casserole. Top with 1 cup chicken mixture; sprinkle with 1 tablespoon of the cheese. Repeat 2 times. Top with remaining tortilla; sprinkle with remaining cheese.
4. Cover; bake 20 to 25 minutes or until mixture is hot and cheese is melted.