Vegetarian Taco Bake
I came up with this super easy recipe on a whim just trying to make a meal out of a couple things we had in the fridge and some pantry staples! Dan and I love tacos and Mexican food so this quick & easy vegetarian taco bake is a favourite that we have at least every couple of weeks.
If you don’t want your taco bake to be vegetarian it would be super easy to add meat. You could sub out the beans for meat or just a layer of meat in between the rice and beans!
These are all things you probably have in your pantry, and we buy shredded cheese in bulk so that’s always lying around as well as scallions! I’m finding that some of the best meals that I make again & again are ones that are just throwing things together to use up what’s left in the fridge.
The rice ends up being a super easy knock off of mexican rice (not authentic in any way I know, but it’s quick!). You could always add some tomato paste, garlic, chili powder, etc. if you want to make it a little more of an authentic mexican rice.
If you don’t want it to be spicy at all, just swap out the original Rotel for the mild one and skip the chili powder.
Ingredients
- 1 cup cooked rice (depending how rice heavy you want the bake to be you can do a little more or a little less)
- 1 can of rotel (we like using the original or the fire roasted for a little extra spice)***
- 1 15oz cans of black beans (you can use another kind of beans if you prefer)
- about 1 and 1/2 cups of shredded cheese (we like to use a mexican blend, you can also use a fiesta or taco blend for similar results)
- scallions (use the whole thing! green & white) or half an onion
- taco seasoning
- chili powder (optional)
***alternatively, chop up one large tomato and one Anaheim pepper for a kind of homemade rotel (if you’re extra fancy, broil these both briefly in the oven before chopping to char them slightly)
Instructions
- make your rice if you haven’t already (you’re going to bake it so if it’s a tiny bit under that’s not a bad thing!)
- pre heat your oven to 350°F and grease a 9×13 baking dish (8×8 works too, it just makes a taller taco bake)
- chop the scallions
- open your can of beans and drain the liquid, reserving 1/4 cup or so
- heat up the beans (we usually just microwave them for 45 seconds or so, but you can also do this part in a pot)
- mix into the beans about 1 tablespoon of taco seasoning (or one packet if you have some of those Old El Paso seasoning packs lying around)
- add the reserved bean liquid to the rice as well as the rotel (or chopped veggies), a bit of chili powder, and some of your chopped scallions (if you’re fancy and separated the green & white parts, add the white parts now) – Mix!
- scoop your rice into the baking dish first and smooth it out/pat it down gently
- next add the beans on top
- finally top it all with plenty of shredded cheese!
- bake at 350° for 15-20 minutes or until the cheese seems nice and melted (I sometimes broil it for just a minute or two in addition to help it brown – but watch it very closely if you do this!)
- sprinkle the rest of the scallions over your finished taco bake
- enjoy!
If you want to add meat to this we’ve enjoyed it with ground beef, but any kind of ground meat should work! Just cook it up like you would for tacos (with some taco seasoning of course) and add it on top of the rice layer before the beans, or you can always swap out the beans for the meat.
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