Taco Quesadilla Pizzas
As many of you know, I like to 'play with my food', experimenting and changing things up! It is always fun to combine two different dishes that are both great by themselves and to make something new and even better like using a taco ingredients as a pizza topping! When I recently came across the idea of combining not just two dishes but three, all very tasty in their own right, into one dish I knew right away that I would have to try making the taco, quesadilla pizzas and soon.
The basic idea behind this recipe is that a taco quesadilla is topped in a pizza like fashion and baked until the cheese on the top has melted. For the taco quesadillas I went with a filling of seasoned ground beef, refried beans, salsa and of course plenty of cheese and I grilled them in a pan until the tortillas were golden brown and crispy. These taco quesadillas are great all by themselves but I continued with the pizza toppings going with a simple salsa and a few more taco filling ingredients and of course lots more cheese!
These taco quesadilla pizzas will disappear in a flash and each is pretty large, being big enough for 2 or more servings. One nice thing about this recipe is that you can either go for the convenience of all store bought ingredients or you can make one or more components from scratch and keep things a little lighter. I can't wait to experiment with a few more quesadilla pizza flavour concepts!
Ingredients :
1/2 pound ground beef
1 tablespoon homemade taco seasoning or 1/2 store bought packet
1/4 cup water
4 (8 inch) tortillas
2 cups cheese such as cheddar and/or jack, shredded
1/2 cup refried beans
3/4 cup salsa
1 tomato, diced
2 tablespoons black olives, sliced
4 green onions, sliced
Directions :
1. Brown the meat in a pan over medium heat, drain the excess grease, mix in seasoning and water and simmer until most of the liquid is gone, about 10 minutes.
2. Sprinkle 1 cup of the cheese evenly over two tortillas followed by the meat and the 1/4 cup of the salsa.
3. Spread the refried beans over the remaining two tortillas and place them on top of the meat covered ones with the bean sides down.
4.Place one of the taco quesadillas in a large pan and grill it over medium heat until the cheese has melted and the tortillas are lightly golden brown, about 2-4 minutes per side.
5. Place the taco quesadilla on a large baking sheet and repeat for the remaining taco quesadilla.
6. Spread the remaining salsa over the tops of the taco quesadillas, sprinkle on the cheese, black olives and green onions.
7. Broil in a preheated oven until the cheese has melted, about 2 minutes. (Keep an eye on them so they do not burn!)
