Description
Let’s smash tacos and grilled cheese together and make this awesome taco grilled cheese sandwich with green chilies. It’s crazy delicious.
Ingredients
Units
Scale
- 3/4 cup diced onion (approx. 1/2 of one medium onion)
- 2 cups colby jack cheese
- 2 cups pepper jack cheese
- 4-5 tablespoon softened butter
- 2 tablespoons Tomato paste
- 2 pounds of ground beef (85/15 blend)
- 2 1/2 teaspoons taco seasoning
- 1 4-ounce can green chilies (I used Old El Paso brand)
- 8 slices of thick brioche bread
- Salt, if needed
- Olive oil to brush on griddle or pan
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Instructions
- Make sure to take your butter out of the fridge and let it soften so that it will spread easily on the bread. I took mine out the night before I made the sandwiches. I kept it covered.
- Cut a medium onion in half (you only need about half). Slice it into thin strips then dice down into smaller bits from there. Smaller dice works best here.
- Shred four cups of cheese. You can use all regular colby or all pepper jack or both. I used both. Made two sandwiches with regular Colby and two with pepper jack. Yes, obviously you can use already-shredded cheese from the store, but if you’re trying to save a little money – shredding it yourself is the way to go.
- Butter ONE SIDE of each of your 8 slices of bread and set aside on a plate or sheet pan.
- Mix the tomato paste in a small bowl with a splash of water.
- Add ground beef to a pan (do not add oil) on medium heat. Break down the beef with a spatula or wooden spoon or both. You will need to break it down continually throughout the cooking process. It needs to be crumbly for the taco filling. Total cook time should be 10-12 minutes. If too much fat accumulates, carefully spoon it out of the pan, but leave a little there. My video shows this well.
- At the end of cooking process, push beef aside and add diced onions to the empty half of pan. There should still be a little fat and you can cook the onions in that for a couple of minutes until they start to soften. Then mix the onions with the beef, turn the heat on high and let the beef get crispy. Don’t touch it for a minute or so. I like to do this until the beef gets a little crispy crust on the outside.
- Once the beef is crispy and crumbly, add the tomato paste and taco seasoning and mix until well combined. Give it a taste. It may or may not need salt depending on the taco seasoning you used. I added a light sprinkling, gave it one final mix. Set aside in a bowl.
- I heated up a counter-top griddle to medium heat. If you don’t have a counter griddle just use two pans. I brushed the griddle with a little olive oil and placed the bread BUTTERED SIDE DOWN on the griddle. Total cook time on these should be about 5 minutes. The goal is golden brown bread and melty cheese.
- Place the shredded cheese on both the top and bottom slices of bread. This is necessary so that the crumbled beef can stick to the cheese and doesn’t fall out when you eat it.
- Spoon the taco filling onto the cheese and press gently with your spoon. Spoon on as much as you can fit.
- Spoon the canned green chilies on top of the taco filling, as much or as little as you want. I didn’t use all the chilies. You can serve extra on side.
- Check the bottoms of the slices to make sure they are golden brown and make sure the cheese is mostly melted.
- Using a spatula add the tops to the sandwiches. Transfer to a cutting board and cut the sandwiches in half.
- Serve as is or serve all your favorite taco toppings on the side. I used salsa, sour cream and guacamole. You can watch my live tasting at the end of the video if you’d like.
