Mexican Stuffed Shells

So I've been on a mission as of late to find recipes that I will actually cook. There are so many recipes out there that are just ridiculous. They have crazy ingredients that I'll never buy and that I'll never want to cook. When I look in cook books there are maybe five recipes in the whole book I would actually be interested in cooking on a normal night. I don't want to cook chiptole chicken kabobs with avocado cream sauce. I'm not going to be cooking  zucchini nachos or beef wellington with warm wilted greens. (That last recipe had literally over 40 ingredients people!) I think sometimes when people look in one of the new cook books or hop on to pinterest they can get a little bit discouraged by the barrage of "this is how I make my own homemade tortillas and almond milk from scratch" because in all reality most of us don't have the time to do that. It comes time to whip up dinner and there aren't enough decent, relatively simple recipes out there, so people resort to boxed and convenience foods. So I'm going to try and post at least 1 recipe a week that I find to be a simple normal recipe that pretty much anyone could whip up.

So long story short, I stumbled across this recipe while exploring pinterest:

http://lmld.org/2014/01/13/mexican-stuffed-shells/#_a5y_p=1826813

I made it tonight with a few tweeks. I'll put my tweeks in bolded parenthesis.

Ingredients:

• 1 pound ground beef
• 1/2 cup yellow onion, diced
• 2 TBS taco seasoning
• 4 oz cream cheese
• about 8 oz jumbo pasta shells (some may break - I used 21 shells total but cooked 25) - (I actually ended up only using 16 for the amount of mixture that this recipe produced)
• 10 oz enchilada sauce
• 1 cup salsa
• 1 1/4 cup cheddar cheese
• 1/2 cup mozzarella cheese
• (A drizzle of taco sauce)

Instructions:

1. Bring a large pot of water to boil.
2. Boil your pasta shells for about 10 minutes until cooked al dente. Rinse shells when done cooking. (Not really a tweek but for anyone who may want to know I cooked my shells until they were just almost done. Not soft. They are still firm. This is what al dente means which I didn't know when I first started cooking. The shells are going to do more cooking in the oven in the liquids they will be sitting in so they will be too soft if you cook them to long from the start.)
3. Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.
4. Meanwhile, cook up your ground beef and onions over medium high heat until cooked thoroughly.
5. Drain the excess grease from the pan.
6. Add in taco seasoning and stir to mix.
7. Add in cream cheese and cook over medium heat until cheese is mixed in and melty throughout. Set aside. (I got a 16 oz jar of salsa. I used 1 cup of it in the steps below and the remainder of the salsa I added to this mixture to make it easier to stir. It seemed very dry before I did this.)
8. Combine your enchilada sauce and salsa in a small bowl.
9. Pour about half of your enchilada sauce salsa mixture into the bottom of a 9x13 pan and spread around.
10. Fill each jumbo shell with a heaping 1 TBS of meat mixture and place into pan with sauce.(I did not measure out a heaping 1 TBS of meat mixture. I just took a big spoon and filled up the shells. Maybe this is why I only made 16? I don't know but that's what I did.)
11. Repeat until all shells or meat mixture is gone.
12. Pour the remaining enchilada sauce salsa mixture over the tops of the shells. (I also added a drizzle of taco sauce)
13. Wrap pan in aluminum foil.
14. Bake for 30 minutes.
15. Remove foil and top with cheeses. (I know the ingredients list has a specific amount listed but I don't measure my cheese when I use it as a topping I just sprinkle til it looks like the amount I would want on the top of my food.)
16. Return to oven and bake for an additional 15 minutes until cheese is melted and bubbly.

Tim and I both liked this! It has made it into "The Book." We have a handwritten recipe notebook and any recipes that make it into "The Book" have to be GOOD and something we want to have again/on a regular basis. I hope you try it!