Wednesday, February 20, 2008

Taco Ring


Introducing another of our favorites...Taco Ring! It's based on a Pampered Chef recipe my mom told me about. You basically take taco meat, put it on crescent rolls, top with cheese and then fold over the tail of the crescent roll. You don't have to make it in a ring...but then you couldn't call it taco ring! Lately the folks at Pilsbury have been cutting their crescent rolls very unevenly. Some are huge and some are tiny. I use 2 cans of reduced fat crescent rolls (no trans fat like the originals) and can hardly tell a difference. For the taco meat I just buy ground turkey and a taco seasoning packet and follow their instructions. At some point I would like to learn to season taco meat on my own without having to buy the little packets. But for right now, the packet works.

Some of you may have noticed that this is our first meal with actual meat in it. We are not vegetarians, but we generally don't eat a lot of meat for a few reasons. The first reason is that I think raw meat is gross, particularly raw chicken. I can handle ground meat though, weird, I know. The second reason is that we are trying to cut out red meat for the health benefits. So when I do use ground meat, I use turkey instead of beef. The third reason is because when I have sucked it up and cooked meat, it doesn't seem to be of the highest quality. I have found a butcher in Poway that a friend of mine uses, so if I decide to make meat again, I will probably go there for a higher quality piece of meat than the Vons has to offer.

5 comments:

Meandering Eats said...

Amen on your comments on meat. Dan and I would make the worst vegetarians on the planet, but lots of meat isn't ideal. Trader Joe's has a good meat selection and we prefer to buy there versus Vons. The turkey's pretty good and I recently bought an organic free-range whole chicken that turned out fabulously and was fairly cheap. I'm also interested in meat that's not sourced from an industrial farm and butchers are usually best for that. I hear Iowa Meats down in Mission Valley is really good.

Our other problem is that if we avoid meat, we don't turn to vegetables. We turn to carbohydrates, which is another host of problems entirely.

Anonymous said...

Kim, The blog is great! I would love this recipe. How have I missed getting it thru the years? KC

Anonymous said...

Brett and I also don't particularly like veggies, but we are trying to branch out a little.

As for a more detailed recipe...it's really so simple I don't even follow one. But I'll make one up.

Ingredients:
1 lb ground turkey or beef
1 packet of Lawry's Taco seasoning
2/3 cup water
2 cans reduced fat crescent rolls
cheddar cheese

Cook your meat on medium high, breaking it up often (especially with turkey because it really wants to stick together.) Drain the fat off when it's all cooked. Add the seasoning packet and water and stir it around until it's all covered and then let it simmer while you get the crescents ready.

Preheat oven to 375

On a large cookie sheet, arrange the uncooked crescent rolls in a ring with the points going outward like a sun. I overlap each one just a tiny bit. Then spoon the taco meat evenly on top of the crescents. Top the taco meat with a small slice of cheddar, then fold the tip of the crescent over. Bake for 13-14 minutes.

Note: You could also just use 1 can of crescents and save half of your taco meat for another night.

Anonymous said...

I showed your blog to one of the guys at work and he wanted the taco ring recipe. :) Glad you posted it!

Anonymous said...

The taco ring brings back so many Limerick memories!