Chili Cornbread Casserole

 

• 1/2 pound ground turkey
• Chopped white or yellow onion
• 1 Tb minced garlic
• 1 can corn, drained
• 1 can petite diced tomatoes with chili peppers
• 1 can black beans, drained
• 1 can chili with beans
• 1/2 cup water
• Salt, pepper, paprika, cumin, chili powder, cayenne pepper (all to taste)
• 1 or 2 packages cornbread/muffin mix, prepared according to directions on package (I used two of the small boxes of Jiffy, which call for 1 egg and 1/4 cup milk for each box)

Season turkey and brown.  Drain.  Sauté onion  and garlic in leftover grease from turkey, adding a little salt to draw out the onion’s liquid.  Add corn and sauté to bring out the sweetness, add tomatoes, black beans, chili, and water.  Bring to a simmer and cook on medium-low heat for 15 minutes.  Taste and add seasoning to your preference.  Cook for 15 more minutes, or until as thick as you desire.  The longer you cook, the more the flavors will mingle and develop.  Heat oven to 400 degrees (or the temperature called for on your cornbread mix).  Pour chili mixture into baking dish and top with prepared cornbread batter.  Bake according to package directions, although it will most likely need to cook slightly longer than that time to thoroughly cook the cornbread.  Test middle of cornbread with toothpick or fork to check for doneness.  If the top gets too brown before it is cooked through, cover with foil and continue cooking (the edges of mine browned quickly, so I put a layer of foil around the edges only, and the middle continued to brown). 

This is delicious, makes a ton of food (enough for at least 6-8 people), and we spent at most $10 on the ingredients.

This entry was posted on Monday, January 7th, 2008 at 2:03 pm and is filed under Yum. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.