Taco Cornbread Casserole

Taco cornbread casserole with ground beef and layered with cheddar cheese on top is comfort food baked in the oven. Aheap family friendly meal you can make homemade or use boxed cornbread mix like our Jiffy Cowboy Casserole recipe.

Taco casserole with cornbread layer is the ultimate feel good meal. Use spicy ground sausage or beef, corn and even black beans would be great inside. If you want new Mexican ground beef recipes on taco Tuesday this is always a winner with kids.

We didn’t add pasta inside the meat layer this time like we did with our Instant Pot Taco Casserole. You could boil some elbow macaroni to al dente beforehand and mix those in, about 1/2 cup uncooked, too if you wanted to. That is more Italian in nature though, instead I opted for corn kernels and diced tomatoes.

This sort of Hamburger HotDish is always a huge hit with everyone and a great way to use up leftovers too. If you had hamburgers the night before and looking for a way to use it up this would be a great second meal solution. You would never know it started off as precooked out of the fridge cooked the day before.

When it comes to the meat you could use half spicy ground sausage and half beef if you wanted to add a bit of heat. I have done this with our Chili Cornbread Casserole before and it has always been a hit.

Ingredient Notes

For the meat I generally will use lean ground beef or spicy Jimmy Dean sausage if I feel like a want a kick of wow to the dish. You could alternatively use half and half for a medium spice level or use a meat-free version.

You will want to add some olive oil to cook meat, sear, or avocado oil could use used for this.

I like to add a small onion diced fine for texture and flavor as well. When adding this to saute I will include some minced garlic for flavor too.

Tomato puree or tomato sauce will thicken the meat into a rich saucy mixture that will create the layer with protein. I imagine you could substitute with spaghetti sauce or enchilada sauce but that wouldn’t be as rich and thick.

Taco seasoning is really all the seasonings you need to add a ton of flavor. This will coat the meat nicely. If you made this as a leftover taco meat recipe you wouldn’t need to add any more of this.

You can add some chiles to make your layer more like our Mexican Cornbread Casserole if you like. You can find mild, medium or spicy in those.

We are huge shredded cheddar cheese lovers so the top layer is that but optional of course. Other additional add ins would be some corn canned, drained, and/or some sour cream or dairy free alternative on the top for a creamy element.

with Jiffy

Jiffy corn muffin mix is going to make the second layer to this creation. You could also need the ingredients to make batter itself which is listed on the back of the box.

Then below is what I used for the cornbread layer. This one is rather basic but you could add a bit of heat like with our Jiffy Mexican Cornbread with diced chiles in it. Semi-homemade or from scratch works, just enough for a square baking dish, but a thin layer so you can layer the taco meat mixture over the top with cheese.

with Homemade Cornbread

If you wanted to make this more from scratch I would follow the recipe in our air fryer cornbread recipe. That is for smaller batches so it will fit well in a 8×8 pan or 9×9 size. The combinations of these main two ingredients are really endless. This is always a winner but we have created Jiffy Tamale Pie too. I like to add a bit of spicy to that one and typically I will use a boxed mix instead of homemade for the breading.

Can you use ground turkey instead of ground beef?

Now let’s go over some variations you could make to this, tweaks I like to say. Let’s start with the meat. Ground turkey is fine and will be lower in fat, but with less flavor. Ground chicken works with the same outcome.

Variations

Optional toppings or items you could include into the mix might be diced green onions, sliced olives or diced jalapenos for heat. Your cornbread mixture is best to use measurements below to only fill half of your pan, Jiffy cornbread mix is about the same amount vs. Krusteauz which I love but will fill the whole thing with no room for meat.

Cheeses are many. I love Mexican cheese blend that has some taco seasoning tossed in there with many of our Jiffy Corn Muffin Mix Recipes. Sharp cheddar shredded cheese is my second choice. You can find dairy free varieties out there too. We love a lot and could add some into the middle as well as on the top, or remove all together if you’d rather.

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