Easy Ground Beef Casseroles

Updated February 13, 2012
Jen Causey; Prop Styling: Kay Clark; Food Styling: Rishon Hanners

Ground beef casseroles are always a good choice for busy weeknight family meals. They’re easy, they’re quick and they won’t break the budget.

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Speedy Shepherd's Pie

Credit: Jennifer Causey; Styling: Missie Neville Crawford

Speedy Shepherd's Pie Recipe

Making the most of supermarket convenience items gets this family favorite on the table in a flash. Precut matchstick carrots are easier to chop into small pieces quickly, and using prepared mashed potatoes for the topping is a good trick for when you don't have leftover mashed potatoes on hand.

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Classic Lasagna with Meat Sauce

Credit: Brian Woodcock; Styling: Claire Spollen

Classic Lasagna with Meat Sauce Recipe

This simple lasagna is perfect for when you're short on time, but craving a comforting meal. Ready in just over an hour, it requires only 50 minutes of cooking in the oven.

Extra-lean ground beef (which sometimes cooks up dry) works well here because it's combined with marinara to keep it moist. For a quick and easy variation, feel free to use 9 whole lasagna noodles instead of 6 broken noodles, using 3 noodles per layer. You also can sub fresh basil leaves for the parsley sprinkled on at the end.   

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Ground Beef and Pasta Casserole

Credit: Jennifer Causey; Styling: Lindsey Lower

Ground Beef and Pasta Casserole Recipe

This casserole is perfect for your busy week when getting in and out of the kitchen needs to be a snap. With very simple prep work, it will become a weeknight staple in your household.

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Baked Italian-Style Cauliflower

Credit: John Autry; Styling: Leigh Ann Ross

Baked Italian-Style Cauliflower Recipe

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Tomato 'n' Beef Casserole With Polenta Crust

Credit: Beth Dreiling Hontzas; Styling: Caroline Murphey

Tomato 'n' Beef Casserole With Polenta Crust Recipe

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Beef-and-Pasta Casserole

Beef-and-Pasta Casserole Recipe

This family-favorite ground beef casserole features cooked rotini pasta combined with canned tomatoes, breadcrumbs, Cheddar cheese and Parmesan and is perfect for a busy weeknight.

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Beef, Cheese, and Noodle Bake

Credit: Lee Harrelson

Beef, Cheese, and Noodle Bake Recipe

Turn mac and cheese into a heartier main dish with the addition of ground beef, onion, carrot, and tomato sauce. Even your pickiest eaters will love this dish.

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Beef Lombardi

Beef Lombardi Recipe

While it may sound like a fancy dish, Beef Lombardi is simply a mixture of ground beef and chopped tomatoes that’s spooned over a mixture of creamy noodles, topped with cheese, and baked. It’s a great make-ahead dish because you can assemble the casserole and freeze it for up to one month.

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Shepherd’s Pie

Credit: William Dickey; Styling: Lisa Powell Bailey

Shepherd’s Pie Recipe

This potato-topped shepherd’s pie gets extra flavor from the cheese and carrots that are added to the mashed potato crust. And you can take a shortcut with the crust because the recipe calls for frozen mashed potatoes.

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10 of 27

Pastel de Choclo (Beef and Corn Shepherd's Pie)

Credit: Oxmoor House

Pastel de Choclo (Beef and Corn Shepherd's Pie) Recipe

In a traditional shepherd’s pie, the ground lamb or beef mixture is topped with a mixture of mashed potatoes, but in this version, the topping is a pureed corn crust and the beef mixture is flavored with onion, garlic, olives and raisins.

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Mexican Lasagna

Mexican Lasagna Recipe

Let your lasagna go Mexican by layering ground beef and sausage with corn tortillas, tomatoes, green chiles, enchilada sauce, and cheese.

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Vanessa's Make-Ahead Beefy Lasagna

Credit: Beth Dreiling Hontzas; Styling: Missie Neville Crawford

Vanessa's Make-Ahead Beefy Lasagna Recipe

A container of refrigerated pesto adds distinctive flavor to this basic beef-and-cheese lasagna, and the unbaked lasagna can be frozen for up to three months.

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Nacho Grande Casserole

Credit: Oxmoor House

Nacho Grande Casserole Recipe

instead of serving a spicy ground beef nacho mixture on a platter over tortilla chips, bake it in a casserole and serve with chips for a hearty main dish or appetizer.

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Cheesy Chili Hash Brown Bake

Credit: Jennifer Davick; Styling: Amy Burke

Cheesy Chili Hash Brown Bake Recipe

This 5-ingredient casserole features convenient frozen hash brown potatoes, a can of Sloppy Joe sauce and can of chili. The mixture is baked either in ramekins for individual casseroles or in a 13 x 9-inch baking dish.

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Extra-Easy Lasagna

Credit: Lee Harrelson; Styling: Jan Gautro, Laura Martin

Extra-Easy Lasagna Recipe

Lasagna recipes don’t get any easier than this 5-ingredient version. You don’t even have to cook the noodles before layering them in the baking dish.

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Spaghetti Casserole

Credit: Oxmoor House

Spaghetti Casserole Recipe

This hearty one-dish meal spaghetti casserole is great for serving a crowd. You can assemble it a day or two ahead and bake just before serving.

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Football Fiesta Casserole

Football Fiesta Casserole Recipe

Layer a spicy ground beef mixture with kidney beans, olives, cheese and corn chips and bake for a main dish casserole that will satisfy the heartiest of appetites. It’s a great choice for both your game-day crowd and your family dinner crowd.

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Noodle-and-Spinach Casserole

Noodle-and-Spinach Casserole Recipe

This lasagna-like ground beef casserole has wide egg noodles instead of lasagna noodles, so there’s no layering required. You simply add a jar of spaghetti sauce to the cooked ground beef, stir in the noodles and a creamy, cheesy spinach mixture, and bake.

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Baked Linguine with Meat Sauce

Baked Linguine with Meat Sauce Recipe

Take this casserole version of spaghetti and meat sauce to your next potluck supper and win rave reviews. The layer of sour cream and cream cheese between the pasta and the meat sauce makes the whole dish rich and creamy and hard to resist.

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Mac and Cheeseburger

Credit: Greg DuPree; Styling: Lindsey Lower

Mac and Cheeseburger Recipe

Mac and cheese gets heartier, and possibly even more family-friendly, when you stir ground beef and fire-roasted tomatoes into the cheese sauce. Make sure to drain the tomatoes so the sauce doesn’t get too thin. We call for whole-grain rotini, but any short pasta shape will work here; just do try to go whole-grain for more nutrition. This budget-friendly dinner costs less than $9. If you don't have dry mustard (used for added depth), stir in a teaspoon of Dijon.

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Greek Baked Ziti

Credit: Greg Dupree; Styling: Heather Chadduck Hillegas

Greek Baked Ziti Recipe

Inspired by the classic Greek comfort dish known as pastitsio, this pasta casserole uses fresh and flavorful ingredients.

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Shepherd's Pie with Potato Crust

Credit: Greg Dupree; Styling: Heather Chadduck Hillegas

Shepherd's Pie with Potato Crust Recipe

Instead of mashed potatoes, use thinly sliced potatoes to form the gorgeous, scalloped crust. We used a mandoline for slicing, but a sharp knife will also work.

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Cheeseburger Casserole

Credit: Time Inc. Video Studio

Cheeseburger Casserole Recipe

If there’s anything that says grade-A comfort food better than a bacon cheeseburger-inspired bake, we don’t know what it is. This family-friendly casserole is a fun, easy, and inexpensive way to serve dinner for a crowd (the recipe is easily doubled or tripled). Feel free to swap the American cheese slices for whatever type of cheese you prefer, such as cheddar or Swiss. 

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Taco Mac & Cheese

Credit: Jen Causey; Prop Styling: Christina Daley; Food Styling: Pam Lolley

Taco Mac & Cheese Recipe

When taco night meets mac and cheese, magic happens. Melty cheese, hearty ground beef, and a creamy Tex-Mex inspired sauce come together in this taco-mac skillet for a maximum comfort food meal. You can absolutely prep this cheesy dinner bake ahead of time to make for even easier weeknight prep; simply assemble (following the recipe through step 4), then cover tightly and refrigerate until you’re ready to bake (add a few minutes to the bake time if you’re going from the fridge to the oven). You can typically find taco skillet sauce shelved near the dry taco seasoning and tortillas in the supermarket.

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Eggplant Lasagna

Credit: Greg Dupree; Prop Styling: Christina Daley; Food Styling: Adam Hickman

Eggplant Lasagna Recipe

Our eggplant lasagna is a delicious, crowd-pleasing dinner that results from swapping traditional lasagna noodles for slabs of fresh eggplant. Besides being a great gluten-free and low-carb alternative to classic lasagna, this comforting casserole is the perfect way to put a load of summer eggplant to good use. The best eggplant to use in this lasagna recipe are the most tubular-shaped that you can find, as these will give you the most even planks of eggplant (vs. the eggplants with large, round bottoms). This cheesy eggplant bake also gets bonus points for being make-ahead friendly. You can prepare and assemble the eggplant lasagna and refrigerate for up to two days before baking; just plan on the lasagna needing a couple of extra minutes in the oven. 

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Taco-Tot Casserole

Credit: Gina DeSimone; Food Styling: Blakeslee Giles; Prop Styling: Audrey Davis

Taco-Tot Casserole Recipe

Tex-Mex meets tater tots in this easy, inexpensive, and all-around comforting one-dish dinner. Our spicy twist on the classic tater tot casserole consists of a succulent ground beef filling—featuring creamy black beans, crisp-sweet corn, cheese, and mild green chiles for a kick—topped with crispy tater tots, and finished with a drizzle of an addictively spicy and tangy sour cream sauce. Top this fiesta of a casserole with fresh garnishes, such as avocado, tomato, jalapeño, and cilantro, and it’s as perfect to serve at your next football feast as it is for a casual weeknight meal. We use 85/15 lean ground beef for this recipe and recommend that you do not go with anything leaner, as the higher fat percentage both contributes to the filling’s rich flavor and keeps it from drying out while baking. 

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Easy Tex-Mex Shepherd’s Pie

Credit: Jen Causey; Prop Styling: Kay Clark; Food Styling: Rishon Hanners

Easy Tex-Mex Shepherd’s Pie Recipe

Shepherd's pie just got easier. This comfort dish takes advantage of a few shortcuts that don’t lesson the flavor or quality of the meal, like refrigerated mashed potatoes and pico de gallo, so you can get dinner on the table fast. Make sure to brown your meat nicely, since it builds flavor. Substitute cheddar cheese for pepper jack, if you prefer it. 

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