I gave 4 stars because I have been making this casserole for years..but with a few changes that I think make it a 5 star. I never mix all the ingredients up together!..drizzle tomato paste around the meat, around the sourcream which is combined with cottage cheese.
I use fresh diced onions, one finely chopped garlic, 1-2 Tbsp. gebhart's chili powder, 1 tsp. cumin power, and add it into the browning beef. Use one small can of tomatoe paste with added water to make into a thick sauce. Cottage cheese instead of ricotta and mixed shredded mexican cheeses, 1 small can sliced black olives. I drizzle the tomato sauce over the meat in the casserole, two layers only and add slices of jalepino and the shredded cheese to the top layer. I omitted the green chilis and if I do sometimes add them I add only one small drained can. This is one of my husbands favorite dishes. Arranging your ingredients in layers, the sourcream and cottage cheese should be dropped in little clumps is the best way to make this dish appealing and tasty. Useing unsalted chips is also nice and keeps the salt intake down..you can always add salt later.
This has always been a family favorite in my house. We have a few variations you can try to kick it up a notch. Use crushed Doritos (Nacho cheese or Fiery Habenero) as your base layer. Substitute cottage cheese for the ricotta. I like my dishes meaty so you can up the amount of beef to 1 1/2 lbs. We only use 1 can of diced green chiles and we don't use onions. We also add 1 tsp of chili powder to flavor the meat along with the garlic salt. It's always an easy dish for company. I never seem to use the entire cream mix because it can make it soupy at times. Serve with Mexican Rice!
The Riccotta Cheese just didn't work with the Mexican ingredients. But I had to give it a try. Sorry...
Hubby really enjoyed this. Told me it was a keeper. He's not one to say much about anything i cook so he must have liked it pretty well.
Yuck! We thought this was awful. I made this because it used many of the things I had in the house already but will not be making it again.
I thought this dish was average. My husband thought this tasted similar to an enchilada because of the corn taste from the tortilla chips. I wonder if using enchilada sauce instead of tomato sauce would make this dish more interesting.
There are no leftovers with this recipe unless I make a double batch! I have been able to easily convert it to vegetarian for my son's family and even my grandson loved it when he was only 18 months old. Fantastic!!
My gramma used to make this all the time though with slight changes! Her variation: 1.5 pounds of ground beef use a whole chopped onion instead of the minced and cook with the beef 1 teaspoon garlic powder (not salt) 3 cans of tomato sauce and add a package of taco seasoning to the beef/olive mix. Then just put a layer of the crushed chips the beef mixture then mix 1.5 cups of cottage cheese with the green chilis and spread that over the top and sprinkle with cheese (leaving out the sour cream). I make this in two 8x8 pans and freeze one before baking. It works great. Just thaw and bake as directed. The chips won't be so crunchy so I just sprinkle more on top when it comes out of the oven.
Very good and easy. I did enjoy this but felt it was more like a dip and I should be dunking my tortilla's and scooping rather than eating like a casserole. Changes I made were I used ground chicken only one can of green chilies and baked chips.
