I love tamales and their combination of crumbly, sweet masa and savory meat filling but since they are kind of a project to undertake at home, I don’t make them often. But that’s where the tamale pie comes in! This easy cheesy version gives you the same soft corn base and hearty meat filling in a bake that takes just thirty minutes in the oven (and is a little saucier and cheesier experience to boot). It’s an easy and comforting dinner that the whole family is always happy about.

A nice feature here is that the corn base bakes while you work on the rest of the components, so while it does have a few steps, it’s very efficient. The base is a bit reminiscent of cornbread – a quick mixture of cornmeal, flour, corn kernels, sour cream, and a few other baking essentials. When it comes out of the oven, you poke holes in it with a fork before drizzling enchilada sauce all over, that way it is sure to seep down into the crumb.

While the ‘cornbread’ layer is in the oven, you work on browning some ground beef with chili powder, salt, cumin, oregano, onion powder, and garlic powder. However, if you’re not the type of person to keep a bunch of dried spices on hand, you could just swap in some taco seasoning for all of those and end up with nearly the same result.

The ground beef mixture goes over the enchilada sauce, and the whole thing gets topped with some Monterey Jack before it heads back into the oven just long enough to get hot and bubbly.

The sauce mingles with meat and the cornmeal layer so every bite is zesty and flavorful and, of course, that layer of ooey-gooey cheese doesn’t hurt matters. Tamale Pie doesn’t cancel out tamales – no way! – but it does let you get homecooked tamale flavor on a busy weeknight, which is very good news.