Every week we’ll post a recipe that we both made. This week’s recipe was Sandy’s Taco Dip, submitted by reader Jennifer Arnold. Printable recipe can be found at the bottom of this post.

Robyn’s Take:

This week’s recipe was submitted by reader Jennifer Arnold, several months ago (according to the time stamp on my email, she submitted it back in August!) It was initially scheduled for us to make sometime in February, but Nance suggested that it would make more sense for us to make it this week, what with the Superbowl coming up. And she was right!

(As an aside, don’t forget that last year we made Stuffed Cheesy Bread on Crack, which is also an excellent Superbowl-type dish. When it comes to the Superbowl, we’ve got you COVERED, yo.)

Right off the bat, I loved how this recipe didn’t require a bunch of different ingredients.

Ground beef, taco seasoning, cream cheese, shredded cheese, salsa. That’s it!

Brown your ground beef in a large skillet.

While that’s going on, spread your (softened) cream cheese in the bottom of a 9×13 baking dish.

It totally looks like a thick layer of buttercream frosting, doesn’t it? YUM.

Once your ground beef is done browning, drain it, then follow the instructions on the taco seasoning packet – which is pretty much always going to be to add water to the browned ground beef, then let it simmer for 3 or 4 minutes. I didn’t take a picture of this part, so you’ll have to use your imagination.

Layer your taco meat on top of the cream cheese.

In retrospect (and looking at this picture), I wish I’d let the liquid completely simmer away before I did this, but oh well. It worked out anyway – there was plenty of liquid in the salsa, so it’s not like this was going to be a dry food.

Layer the entire jar of salsa over the top of the taco meat.

Then sprinkle your cheese over the top.

Bake until the whole thing is bubbly – I took mine out of the oven at 12 minutes, but I think it would have been fine to go to 15.

After you take it out of the oven, let it cool for a couple of minutes before digging in with the tortilla chips.

The verdict? This stuff was GOOD. I actually ate a ton of it with tortilla chips, and then ate some more over angel hair – I know, it sounds weird. It was lunch time, and nothing in the fridge looked good to me, so it was Angel Hair Taco Dip for me.

Fred liked it even more than I did – though he thought it had too much cream cheese, and he ended up putting some in a bowl, adding more salsa, and stirring it all together before eating it with tortilla chips.

I know there are a ton of taco dip recipes on the internet (I looked!), but most of them are kind of fussy, with the shredded lettuce and chopped tomatoes and chopped olives. This recipe right here is super simple, goes together quickly – and really, who are you trying to impress? If you’re making this stuff for a Superbowl party, you’re talking about a bunch of ingrates who’ll drink all your beer and wine and get into fistfights over some game-related nonsense. Don’t go overboard for those assholes.

Chefan is once again unhappy with me; since there’s onion in this (from the salsa), he can’t have any. WOE.

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Have a recipe you want us to make? Check out this page (there’s also a link to that page up there under the banner) and follow the instructions to submit a recipe!

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Nance’s Take:

I asked Robyn to tweak our recipe schedule so we would be doing this one before the Super Bowl because you never know when someone is planning a Super Bowl party, right?  Go Seahawks!  LOB (Legions of BOOM).  Yeah, trust me when I say it’s going to be tense up in here because Shirley’s rooting for Denver. We’re gonna need food to keep our shit-talkin’ mouths busy!

This is a Facebook conversation I had with my oldest son. Barring the salty language, the implication is true. He’s basing it off of our last get-together in which we all heckled the Golden Globe Awards. Our gatherings are small and LOUD. Robyn can testify to The Crazy that is my family, but we always have food and a good time so there’s that. Unfortunately, work schedules didn’t allow for a Grammy Awards party, but I still made the dip.

When I decide to make something I want to do it right that minute (dammit). The ground beef being in the freezer caused a bit of a dilemma.  Thank God my microwave has an express defrost button.

The Beagle does not appreciate the fact that I am ruining her chances of eating ground beef by putting taco seasonings in it.

The microwave also has a soften button which saved my ass when it came time for the cream cheese. If only it had a dust my house button.

By the way, I halved this recipe.

This is where I start to wonder if Rick is going to even try this stuff because he doesn’t like cream cheese.  And now you know why I halved this recipe.

Awkward action shot. Salsa! Tequila! Whoops! Just Salsa!

I just noticed that there are two (2) copyright notices on these pictures. Better not try to lift my prints, yo. There’s a pretty good chance that I have listened to way too much rap music today, but you probably already figured that out.

The cheese. Probably way more than the recipe called for.  But if you think I’m ever going to worry about having too much cheese, you are SO WRONG because cheese IS LIFE (unless you are no longer eating cheese – and if you get that reference my husband will think you’re the shits). Although I really don’t like pre-shredded bagged cheese because check out that shit that’s coating it. Anti-clumping stuff…blech, I hate that.

I very specifically told Rick that this was done when the cheese was bubbling. That cheese was not done when he took it out of the oven. And HE took this picture since I was too busy doing running commentary on The Grammy Awards so everyone on my Facebook would know my thoughts on Robin Thicke (love the song, hate that leeeeeezure suit wearin’ douchebag).

Anyway…

This dip was so easy to make and we thought it was fabulous. Definitely a keeper!