InstantPot Taco Pie

One day I was scrolling through Pinterest, and saw a recipe that intrigued me for "Taco Pie".

It looked good, and I was intrigued. To see the original recipe click here or here for mini.

While the pies intrigued me, when looked over the ingredients, I was all disgusted. Not that it is not probably tasty, but I try to avoid unhealthy, processed foods, meat, and dairy as much as possible.

So I decided to make my own version of this recipe.

At first I was planing on just making a meat version that was healthier; then I remembered one of my fall back recipes for Vegan taco's and that is where this recipe came from. I did use dairy, so this is not vegan, but it is a relatively healthy vegetarian version of Taco Pie.

To start you need to make Quinoa. Because I was doing this for the taco pie, I made just plain quinoa. I used a 1 part quinoa to 1.25 water ratio.

Also please remember to rinse your quinoa before cooking to remove the natural insecticide produced by quinoa.

I added the quinoa and water into my InstantPot, and set to for 1 minute of pressure cooking, with the valve closed, and do a natural release on the pressure. I have seen lots of other suggestions for quinoa with the InstantPot, but this one results in the best overall texture.

As the Quinoa cooked, I gathered the rest of my ingredients. I think this is a really flexible recipe, anything that says taco to you could be added. I swiped out the flour tortillas for corn, and the re-fried beans for black beans. I also added caned corn, and added guacamole (natures butter) and some cheddar cheese. But I think any high quality cheese (maybe Mexican blend of paper jack).

I also decided to make these as mini pies and cooked them in ramekins. I was able to cut the tortillas with a biscuit cutter, and I was lucky hey fit perfectly.

Now the secret to why this tastes so yummy is how I prepare the quinoa "Taco meat". So you take the cooked quinoa, and add salsa and taco seasoning to taste. The gesture needs to me close to that of ground beef too, to make it less noticeable as a meat substitute.

I then layered the quinoa, beans, corn, and cheese between layers of guacamole covered tortillas. and covered the top with salsa and cheese.

I put all mini pies into the InstaPot uncovered, for 10 minutes on the pressure cooking setting, and then did a quick release.

While they cooked I realized i needed to top them off with something, and I needed to do something with the leftover corn. So I mixed some beans, the leftover corn, some tomatoes, lime juice, the remaining quinoa I mixed, pomegranate seeds, and some pistachios for a topping.

I just happened to have these around, really anything you feel is taco like works.

I was so happy with the end results. It was WAY better than I expected. I no joke ate 3 of these mini pies when I made them. With the healthy swap outs from the original recipe, I didn't ruin my current weight loss, and had a great meal.

Would love to hear what you all think or tried with this recipe!

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