What's Cooking Wednesday: Taco Pizza

I make pepperoni pizza once a week - sometimes even twice! It’s a favorite and a staple around our house when it comes to a yummy, weekend dinner. I was pursuing Pinterest a few weeks ago and came across a taco pizza. I love tacos and I love pizza, so I wasn’t against it. I checked out the recipe and found it to be simple and easy; two of my favorite recipe descriptors. 

Yesterday, I realized I had some ground beef I needed to use and thought back to this recipe. Again, the recipe wasn’t long, so I only needed a couple other ingredients. I grabbed them at the grocery store and gave this recipe a try last night!

As I was making the pizza I had an ah-ha moment. This taco pizza is basically the pizza version of Taco Bell’s chalupa - which I love. Like, really love. And then I got extra excited about making it. 

I found the recipe here, but I’ll go ahead and write it below as well.

Need;

• 2 tubes crescent rolls
• 1 package (8 oz) cream cheese, softened
• 1 cup sour cream
• 1 pound ground beef*
• 1 packet taco seasoning
• 1 medium tomato, chopped
• 1 cup shredded cheddar cheese
• 1 cup shredded mozzarella cheese
• 1 cup shredded lettuce

Directions:

1. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.

2. Unroll the crescent roll dough and layout on the ungreased cookie sheet. Pinch the perforations together to seal. Bake at 375 for 8-10 minutes or until light golden brown. Cool.

3. In a small bowl, mix the softened cream cheese and sour cream. Use a whisk to remove any lumps. 

4. Spread over the cooled crust. The original recipe calls for putting the crescent rolls with the cream cheese mixture into the fridge to cool, but I didn't do that. I just kept going.

5. Brown the ground beef and drain. Add taco seasoning packet and water, according to package directions. 

6. Sprinkle the ground beef evenly over the cream cheese layer. Top with lettuce, tomatoes, and cheese.

7. Cut into serving-size pieces and serve immediately or refrigerate.

It didn't take incredibly long to make the pizza, but there are steps you could do ahead of time to make it even faster:

1. Earlier in the day, or, really, the night before, you could make the beef and refrigerate it. 

2. You could mix the cream cheese and sour cream, keep that refigerate too. 

3. Chop the tomatoes, prepare lettuce, and shred the cheese - I actually just bought pre-chopped tomatoes, lettuce, and cheese for this recipe for easy prep!

*The recipe calls for ground beef (or turkey, or I guess you could to chicken too). I also think you could dice or shred chicken and then season it with the taco packet. 

I made homemade Spanish rice as a side and we ate over half the pizza. I did feel like using two packages of crescent rolls was more than we needed. I could have cut this recipe in half (it's me, my husband, and two toddlers). My youngest ate her entire piece of pizza. I think she ate the toppings off the top then ate the bread last, but nonetheless. My oldest picked and ate some of it, but killed the rice. So, there's that. I would go ahead and say it's toddler approved.