Taco Ring

Last week my mom and I went to Taste of Home Magazines Cooking School. I’ve been to one before. You get a nice goodie bag, a few free special issue magazines and a chance at a lot of door prizes and you see a demo of about 6 recipes. My mom and I didn’t win anything this time around. The time before when we attended I won one of the dishes that they prepared, including the pan it was cooked in so that was pretty cool. None of the dishes they made really excited me, but there was one that looked interesting. They called it a Taco Meatball Ring. I liked the concept, but the fact that there were whole meatballs in it turned me off, so I got to thinking about making this a different way.

Here’s what I came up with.

Lisa’s Taco Ring
1 ½ pounds ground beef
3/4 cup water
1 package of taco seasoning
2 tubes refrigerated crescent rolls (8 ounces each)
1 cup shredded cheddar cheese
1 medium onion
½ cup sliced olives

Cook the onions until they are soft and translucent, add the ground beef and cook until browned. Drain and return to pan. Add in a package of taco seasoning and ¾ of a cup of water. Cook just until water is absorbed. Set aside and let it cool a bit. Add in 1 cup of shredded cheddar and the olives. You could also add additional ingredients at this point, i.e., jalapeños, diced tomatoes, make it your own.

Arrange the crescent rolls on a greased deep dish pie pan forming a ring with the pointed ends facing outward. I used 11 of the crescents to line the pan and the last one to fill the gap at the bottom of the pan. I will look like a big radiating sun.

Fill the pan with the beef mixture. Pull the ends of the crescent rolls towards the middle. Bake at 350 until golden brown.

I served this with some shredded lettuce and sour cream.

Consensus was: “This is great Mom!” Definitely a kid pleaser.