Easy beef and bean quesadillas with roasted sweet potatoes, avocado, and cheddar cheese topped with avocado sauce.
I am all about an easy peasy meal (and healthy-ish of course!) whenever possible. Yet I think everyone has a different understanding of the word “easy” when it comes to meals. Like does easy mean it’s ready waiting in the crockpot? Or it takes less than 10 ingredients? Or it only requires dirtying one pan or pot? What exactly qualifies as being easy?
Well I have come up with a few ideas and you may or may not agree but this is what I got:
- A recipe with 5 parts or less. Examples of one part of a recipe includes boiling water and cooking pasta until al dente, cooking meat, roasting vegetables, and/or making a sauce.
- An ingredient list that is not obnoxiously long. Ten ingredients is a reasonable number so somewhere close around there is good. I’m sorry but when I see easy and then a recipe has 25 ingredients I just chuckle. I should probably go back through all my recipes with the word easy in the title now!!
- The cooking methods most common for people include frying, baking, simmering, boiling, and roasting. Whatever method you use, the instructions need to be in great detail so whatever method is used, the recipe becomes easy because of the well written instructions.
That’s my short and sweet list of what makes a recipe easy. Call me crazy but easy means different things for different people so that’s I mean when I say a recipe is easy!!
Yes, this recipe is for quesadillas. No, that does not mean that’s the only way it can be eaten! We love eating these leftovers without tortillas and adding extra avocado sauce because well, why not?
This is just a recipe and not a hard fast rule, so get creative and use it as you may. Sometimes, the best meals are made of things you just throw together. Agree?
Like I wasn’t planning on putting sweet potatoes in these quesadillas but I had an extra one in the pantry and was like let’s try this. And I love it in these beef and bean quesadillas.
Whatever changes you make to these is cool, but just don’t and I mean DON’T (yes I’m yelling this) LEAVE OUT THE AVOCADO SAUCE. It will rock your world.
Easy Beef and Bean Quesadillas with Avocado Sauce
Ingredients
Roasted Sweet Potato
- 1 medium sweet potato peeled and chopped
- 1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
- 1/4 teaspoon Kosher salt
- 1/8 teaspoon ground black pepper
- 1/8 teaspoon ground cumin
Ground Beef
- 1 pound ground beef
- 1/2 cup black beans rinsed and drained
- 1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
- 1/2 teaspoon ground oregano
- 1/4 teaspoon Kosher salt
Avocado Sauce
- 1 avocado peeled and pitted
- 1/4 cup plain yogurt
- 1 tablespoon lime juice
- 1/4 teaspoon Kosher salt
Quesadillas
- Extra virgin olive oil
- 8 '' flour tortillas
- 1 avocado peeled, pitted, and cubed
- 1 cup cheddar cheese shredded
Instructions
Roasted Sweet Potatoes
- Preheat oven to 425℉. Arrange chopped sweet potato on a rimmed baking sheet. Drizzle olive oil over sweet potato. Season with the salt, pepper, and cumin. Toss around to mix the seasonings together and then arrange into one even layer again. Roast for 25 minutes, tossing halfway through.
Ground Beef
- Meanwhile cook ground beef in a large skillet and cook over medium high heat breaking it up into small pieces. Cook for about 8-10 minutes or until cooked through and no pink is visible. Add black beans, cumin, oregano, and salt and stir in. Transfer to a bowl and keep near the stove. Wash and dry skillet to use for quesadillas.
Avocado Sauce
- In a medium bowl, mash avocado with a fork. Add plain yogurt, lime, juice, and salt and mix well. Store in fridge until ready to use.
Quesadillas
- Arrange an assembly line of tortillas, the beef and bean mixture, roasted sweet potatoes, cubed avocado, and cheddar cheese. Add a scoop of the cooked ground beef and bean mixture to one half of the tortilla, followed by a little of the roasted sweet potato, a few pieces of cubed avocado, and a sprinkle of cheddar cheese. Fold over the empty half of the tortilla over the filled half. Repeat for remaining quesadillas.
- Heat 1-2 tablespoons olive oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Cook quesadilla 1-2 minutes per side, reducing heat to medium low if necessary. The skillet seems to get hot quickly after the first quesadilla is cooked. Remove from heat and cut down the middle and serve. Top with avocado sauce and a squeeze of lime if desired.
If you give this recipe a go, let me know!! Snap a pic and tell me how it went on Pinterest! Thanks so much!!
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