Ground Beef Taco Skillet Recipe

When we need a quick, tasty, and easy to make dinner, we love a good ground beef skillet recipe, and this Ground Beef Taco Skillet recipe is one of our favorites!

This recipe is filling, customizable, and very kid friendly. Our young daughter loved dumping the various ingredients into the skillet and helping stir. She liked eating it even more. The flavors were perfectly balanced with a touch of spice but not too much. The combination of meat, veggies, and beans were filling, nutritious, and most importantly, delicious.

If you’re looking for a quick meal that’s made in one pot for easy cleaning and is super tasty, you need to try this ground beef taco skillet.

Now, here are the answers to a few questions you may have about the recipe:

What goes in this ground beef taco skillet?

It’s important to say that this ground beef taco skillet is super customizable. You can add or subtract whatever you like, but this is what we used:

• Ground Beef
• White Onion
• Red Pepper
• Rotel
• Black Beans
• Corn
• Tortilla Chips
• Shredded Cheese

You can dump in more ingredients such as:

• Diced green chiles for more spice
• More bell peppers for color
• Minced garlic if you like garlic
• Whatever sounds good to you!

What should I serve with this ground beef taco skillet?

This skillet was super fun to eat. We scooped out the baked tortilla chips onto a plate and then put a generous helping of the skillet on our plate. We scooped a little bit of the filling onto the chips and also had the following taco toppings available for dipping / topping.

• Chopped cilantro
• Lime wedges
• Salsa
• Guacamole
• Sour cream

Of course, we couldn’t help but have a margarita with dinner – it was a perfect pairing for a Taco Tuesday!

Do you have a favorite taco seasoning to use in this recipe?

Why yes, we do! We really like this Mesa Rosa Chipotle Spice Blend from Stonewall Kitchen. It’s not too spicy, but has enough heat to let you know it’s there, plus just a bit of smoky notes that we really like.

There are obviously a ton of different taco seasonings that are available, and you can use your favorite. If you have a little bit of time and want to make a homemade taco seasoning to use in your ground beef taco skillet, here’s

• 1 tbsp. Kosher Salt
• 1 tbsp. Chili Powder
• 2 tsp. Garlic Powder
• 2 tsp. Onion Powder
• 2 tsp. Ground Cumin
• 1 tsp. Black Pepper
• 1/4 tsp. Cayenne Pepper (omit if you prefer a more mild taco seasoning)

If you have a great taco seasoning recipe, we’d love to hear it – just leave us a note in the comments below!

What type of beef should I use?

For this ground beef taco skillet, we used our “standard” 85% lean ground beef that’s available at Lake Geneva Country Meats. It’s a blend of Angus beef – mostly chuck but with steak trimmings added to it that we grind on-site. That gives it great flavor and just enough fat to cook well.

You could use an 80% lean ground beef if you prefer a little “juicier” flavor, and if you’d like leaner, well check out the next section.

If you like big chunks of beef, you could use our coarse ground beef instead of the standard grind, or even use stew meat cut into 1/4″ chunks (again – see the note below about using leaner meat).

Can I use ground turkey instead of ground beef?

Yes, you can definitely use ground turkey, or any other type of ground meat in this recipe. Ground pork, ground chicken, heck even ground venison would work just fine in this recipe. If you use a leaner type of ground meat like turkey or venison, you may need to add a little bit of vegetable oil to help cook the vegetables.

Is this recipe good leftover?

Yes, the recipe made a little too much for our small family, so we had a good amount of leftovers. To reheat the skillet, we just stirred in a little bit of salsa to the mixture to add a bit of moisture and dumped the skillet on top of fresh tortilla chips. We added a little bit more cheese, microwaved for a minute and boom, we had nachos.

They tasted great, and the flavors were a little bolder after sitting for a day in the refrigerator. You can also serve this over rice, or inside a tortilla to change up the meal a little bit and keep the leftovers from being too boring. And remember – if you add a squeeze of lime on top, it’ll freshen up the flavors nicely!

Okay, onto the “meat” of our ground beef taco skillet recipe. We hope you like it, and if you have feedback, tips, or questions, please leave us a rating and / or review below. If you’re looking for more quick one-pot dinners, you can find all of our one pot dinners right here. Cheers!