Southwest Beef Cavatappi
with Green Pepper & Smoky Red Pepper Crema
- Wheat
- Milk
The Southwest meets Italy in this skillet supper, which boasts bold flavors that’ll warm you from the inside out. There’s twisty cavatappi, bites of flavorful ground beef, and sautéed green pepper, all topped with a Mexican cheese blend, smoky red pepper crema, tangy sour cream, and hot sauce for a little kick. A sprinkle of scallion greens adds an extra pop of color. Yes, one skillet really is all that!
Ingredients
1 unit
Long Green Pepper
2 unit
Scallions
6 ounce
Cavatappi Pasta
(Contains: Wheat)
10 ounce
Ground Beef
1 tablespoon
Southwest Spice Blend
1 unit
Tomato Paste
2 unit
Beef Stock Concentrate
1.5 tablespoon
Sour Cream
(Contains: Milk)
4 tablespoon
Smoky Red Pepper Crema
(Contains: Milk)
½ cup
Mexican Cheese Blend
(Contains: Milk)
1 teaspoon
Hot Sauce
Not included in your delivery
Salt
Pepper
1 tablespoon
Cooking Oil
1 tablespoon
Butter
(Contains: Milk)
Nutrition Values
Utensils
Cooking Steps
• Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Wash and dry produce. • Halve, deseed, and thinly slice green pepper into strips. Trim and thinly slice scallions, separating whites from greens.
• Once water is boiling, add cavatappi to pot. Cook, stirring occasionally, until al dente, 9-11 minutes. • Reserve 1 cup pasta cooking water (2 cups for 4 servings), then drain. • Meanwhile, heat a large drizzle of oil in a medium pan (large pan for 4) over medium-high heat. Add green pepper and season with salt and pepper; cook, stirring occasionally, until slightly softened, 4-5 minutes.
• Add a drizzle of oil to pan with green pepper. Add beef*, scallion whites, and Southwest Spice Blend; season with salt and pepper. Cook, breaking up meat into pieces, until beef is browned and cooked through, 4-6 minutes. TIP: If there’s excess grease in your pan, carefully pour it out. • Add tomato paste; cook, stirring occasionally, until combined, 30 seconds.
• Add ½ cup reserved pasta cooking water (¾ cup for 4 servings) and stock concentrates to pan with beef mixture. Season with ½ tsp salt (1 tsp for 4) and a pinch of pepper. Bring to a simmer and cook, stirring, until thickened, 2-3 minutes.
• Reduce heat to low and stir in drained cavatappi, sour cream, smoky red pepper crema, half the Mexican cheese blend (you’ll use the rest in the next step), 1 TBSP butter (2 TBSP for 4 servings), and hot sauce to taste. Season with salt and pepper to taste. TIP: If needed, stir in more reserved pasta cooking water a splash at a time until pasta is coated in a creamy sauce.
• Top beef cavatappi with remaining Mexican cheese blend; cover pan until cheese melts, 1-2 minutes. Divide between bowls; top with scallion greens and serve.
Ground Beef is fully cooked when internal temperature reaches 160º.
Customer reviews
Review summary
Updated on Apr 2026- Flavor: Many love the smoky, hearty taste, though some find it bland and suggest adding extra seasoning or garlic.
- Ease of prep: Super easy one-pan meal that's quick to prepare, though a few found the instructions confusing about pasta water amounts.
- Suggestions: Try adding diced onions, mushrooms, or tomatoes for extra vegetables; some reduce the southwest seasoning if too intense.
- Leftovers: Tastes even better the next day and provides generous portions, often enough for multiple meals.
- Comparisons: Frequently described as an elevated or upscale hamburger helper with better ingredients and more complex flavors.
Reviews from our home cooks
A nice adult version of hamburger helper! The cavatappi pasta is the perfect shape. This dish definitely would benefit from some chopped onion and tomato (which I added from my own pantry). The poblano pepper was perfect and delicious! The red pepper crema really added a nice flavor too. I added more hot sauce for my personal taste. Overall, it was a nice, hearty dish!
Easy to prep and quick cooking time. The southwest beef cavatappi dish was very delicious, whole family loves it!
I liked the noodles, called cavatappi. I had never heard of that before. The flavors of everything were good. I liked the green pepper and the smoky red pepper crema. It was pretty easy to make and took me about 40 minutes.
Excellent dish overall, spice and heat level is good. In future would add 1 more poblano pepper to balance out the cavatappi. Also would use less oil in the dish and drain the beef to reduce the overall fat content.
The poblano peppers add delicious flavor and the smoked pepper crema was very unique. I loved this recipe and I wish I knew how to make the smoked pepper crema that came with this meal because I would use it on everything!
We love any southwest pasta. The meat was good, at first I didn't think the ground beef was going to be a winner with this pasta but it was. I was smart this time and wore rubber gloves when processing and cutting the poblano peppers..........usually my hands start burning an hour or so after cooking and I sit there with a cold washcloth on my hands until I fall asleep. Not this time, I used gloves like I said.
Step 3 directions have you add the beef, scallion whites, southwest spice blend, salt and pepper and then cook. Because the beef is fatty and greasy, when you pour out the grease, you drain away a lot of the seasoning. The grease I drained was right at 4 ounces. Because of this, the southwest spice blend should not be added until the grease is drained, which would allow the beef to have more flavor.
We like this meal a great deal, mainly because it's easy to add extra ingredients to it to improve the taste and nutritional value, and make enough for an additional dinner and/or two to three lunches. I added one onion, two poblano peppers, about 8 San Marzano tomatoes from my garden, a quarter pound of ground beef, and a spare packet of Southwest Blend that I had on hand.
We Really enjoyed this meal. I added some extra peppers and could stretch it for 5 people as my other son is now home from school. The taste was fantastic. I used a little less of the seasoning as I didn't want too much if a ranch southwest flavor but we love the red pepper crema. This was a favorite of ours
This was delicious, although I spiced it down for our (non-spice-loving) tastes. I used a green bell pepper instead of the poblano, and I added some extra sour cream in place of the smoky crema. Otherwise, we loved it.
