Mexican Lasagna

This is Brian's famous Mexican Lasagna recipe. It is also, however, a dish that doesn't really have a recipe.

What you will need:

An Old El Paso Gordita Dinner Kit
1 can Hunt's Manwich Bold Sloppy Joe sauce
1 can Hormel chili with NO beans
1 lb either ground beef or ground turkey
2 lbs of shredded cheese (Chedder, mexican blend, taco blend, etc)
9X13 pyrex baking pan
Mexican Spices (garlic powder, paprika, etc)
1 box of Spanish rice mix cooked
Ranch dressing

1) Cook ground beef/turkey in a large pot with Mexican spices that you have lying around the house
2) While that is cooking, cut the tortillas from the box kit into triangles and line the bottom of the 9X13 pan with half of them so that you cant see the bottom glass
3) Spread half of the ranch sauce on top
4) Cover ranch sauce and tortillas with half the cheese
5) After turkey/beef is cooked, drain and put back in the pot
6) Mix in the rice, Hormel and Manwhich and keep on the stove until hot
7) After it is hot, pour on top of the tortillas, ranch and cheese in the pan
8) Pour some more of the ranch sauce on top of the meat sauce
9) Cover the top of the ranch/meat sauce with the rest tortillas so you can not see the meat below
10) Pour the rest of the ranch (if you don't have enough use the ranch salad dressing) over the top of the tortillas
11) Cover that with the rest of the cheese.
12) Bake in an oven at 350 for about 30 minutes or until cheese is lightly browned and bubbly

This is not a meal for side dishes...it is very filling. I would make a salad and that is probably about it. I also wouldn't serve it in large portions. We first cut 9 slices out of it and then cut each slice in half and we are fine. Sometimes we do go back for more later. When we were each eating 1/9th of it we were eating WAY too much. It makes a LOT!

Right now we have substituted the rice for 15 ounces of drained diced tomatoes so we will see how that is. Also if you have some cheese you haven't used, feel free to dump it in this dish. We used 1 full bag of Mexican blend but had 1/4 bag of Cheddar that we used as well to use it up. We also had Brian's chili sauce left over from taco night last week which we layered in as well. This is definitely a recipe that can be tweaked and added to based on what you have on hand.

Buying the Gordita Box so far is the cheapest way of getting all the ingredients. Technically you can buy all the ingredients separately but so far it is cheaper to just buy the Gordita box. Also, the Gordita Box's are kind of hard to find so we buy three at a time and always keep 3 Hormel Chili cans and 3 Manwich cans so we can make this in a pinch if need be. All we are ever missing is cheese and the turkey.