Spicy Beef, Tomato and Corn Stew – An Easy Weeknight Dinner

Spicy Beef, Tomato and Corn Stew is a real food, hearty easy recipe perfect for busy weeknights. Pair it with a salad and chips or quesadillas for a Southwest flavored meal. Make sure to check out the Quick Healthy Recipes page for more ideas!

For most of my life I’ve been a recipe follower – I wouldn’t often make dishes up completely from scratch. (I think this is some kind of personality trait for those of you into Meyers-Briggs, right?) Then I started this website (way back in the winter of 09…) and I started to adapt and tweak recipes to make them my own to be able to share with you all.

That is still mainly how I work – I have a folder (and Pinterest, of course) of inspiration recipes that I base new recipes on, changing them up to be easier, healthier, or use more common ingredients (keeping with AOC’s purpose of simple whole food recipes).

But this southwest flavored spicy ground beef, tomato and corn stew is all mine, start to finish. I had an idea of what I wanted, looked online for what I was thinking of, and when I couldn’t find anything even remotely close I just made it up myself.

It turned out just like I had imagined and we all loved it! Even though it uses ground meat instead of stew meat, I’m calling it a stew because it’s thick. But you can call it a soup if you want- I’m easy that way.

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Making Ground Beef, Tomato and Corn Stew

This recipe uses basic ingredients most of us have on hand – especially if you freeze peppers and corn when they’re in season. There are pantry and store alternatives in the printable recipe though, since I know not everyone has the ability to freeze loads of food and I want as many as possible to be able to make this quick, yummy stew. Oh, and even though there is “beef” in the title, any ground meat works – even the turkey pictured here. I’ve made this many times now and just use whatever I have on hand – it’s all good.

To make this, just brown the meat, onions, and peppers, then add the other ingredients and let it all simmer on the stove for 30 minutes. Yep, pretty much the definition of simple, right?

So should we talk about how inexpensive this is, too, or just concentrate on the flavor and ease? Well, I’ll just mention that frozen vegetables and canned tomatoes (whether they’re from your garden or the store) are some of the cheapest whole foods to buy out of season and there are always deals to be had on ground meat. This will definitely help you stay in your food budget.

Since this is an original recipe, I was surprised the first time I served it when Brian said, “Wow, this is my new favorite meal… and it’s a surprise- I wasn’t even expecting it!” (I think he meant that soups and stews don’t normally make him think “favorite meal” when he sees them. He’s more of a chicken or hamburger type of guy.) That made my day, as you can imagine!

I like to serve this stew with regular or bean and cheese quesadillas and a green salad tossed with a homemade vinaigrette with a bit of hot sauce added for a southwest flavor.

Who knew such a humble meal could be elevated to “favorite” status? I think you’ll want to see if it can become one of your family’s favorite meals, too (I’m pretty sure it will!).

Click the arrow for the full printable recipe!

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