Spicy and with just a bit of smokiness I am obsessed with adding chipotle sauce to everything. It is the perfect finishing touch on this Southwest Skillet with Chipotle sauce. A beautiful blend of sweet potatoes, ground beef, and bell and poblano peppers. And believe it or not this skillet is healthy too! Perfect for those looking to cut back on dairy or sugar or those following the paleo, keto, or whole 30 diets.
Everyone loves skillet meals, I think it’s a universal fact. I’m not sure what I was doing before I had a cast iron skillet to make meals in. While you can certainly make this recipe in a regular skillet with no problem, you’re missing out on that incredible sear and browning that a cast iron skillet provide. I love tossing some meat, potatoes, and whatever other vegetables I have on hand into a skillet and calling it a meal. Most of the time it works great. In this instance, it works incredible!
My husband (who does not cook) was the one that first introduced me to cooking with cast iron. He bought a pre-seasoned skillet and decided that he needed to strip it and redo the seasoning himself. You definitely don’t have to be as extra as us and do this. It will make your house smell not awesome for a while as it requires several hours of baking the skillet over and over.
Now we’ve taken to collecting cast iron skillets and other cooking accessories from flea markets if we can find a good deal on one. I realize that you’re probably thinking, how many skillets does one person need? Well, you’ve never seen me cook before. Despite the fact that a lot of my recipes on the blog are quick and simple the process to get there usually involves me running every appliance I own at one time. So multiple skillets going isn’t that uncommon of a site in my kitchen.
But back to the fabulous skillet at hand. When I was brainstorming and creating this recipe the first thing I wrote down was peppers, lots of peppers! And this skillet certainly brings the peppers. While you might be tempted do not skip out on adding the poblano. It takes the flavor to a completely different level and adds a whole different tang to the dish. The sweet potatoes help balance it out and make it friendly for your kids and the family too.
Tips for Making this Southwest Chipotle Skillet:
- I know it’s an extra step, but it’s really important to brown the meat and then add the potatoes. Cooking the potatoes and meat together will end up in hard potatoes and every crispy meat. Believe me, I know from personal experience!
- If your potatoes are taking too long to cook, you can turn down the heat and add a little water to the pan and cover it. This will help steam the potatoes and soften them up. If you do this, be sure to turn down the heat so you don’t get a face full of hot steam.
Southwest Skillet with Chipotle Sauce
Smokey, just a little spicy and filled to the brim with colorful veggies this skillet is the perfect easy, weeknight dinner. Sweet potatoes, ground beef, and pepper covered in a creamy chipotle sauce combine to make your new favorite skillet dinner.
Ingredients
Southwest Skillet
- 1 Lb Ground Beef
- 2 Medium Sweet Potatoes Diced
- 1/2 Tsp Cumin
- 1/4 Tsp Paprika
- 1/4 Tsp Salt
- 1/4 Tsp Pepper
- 1 Medium Red Bell Pepper Diced
- 1 Medium Yellow Bell Pepper Diced
- 1 Medium Poblano Pepper Diced
- 1 Medium Red Onion Diced
Chipotle Sauce
- 2 Cups Mayonnaise Homemade or Storebought
- 1 Chipotle Pepper Finely Minced
- 1 Tbsp Lime Juice
- 1/4 Tsp Cumin
- 1/4 Tsp Salt
- Cilantro For garnish
Instructions
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Heat a skillet over medium heat and add the ground beef. Cook until all meat is browned, about 5-6 minutes. Remove from skillet to a bowl and set aside.
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Do not drain the skillet. Add the diced sweet potato to the skillet and cook over medium high heat for about 10 minutes. Stirring once or twice.
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Once the sweet potatoes have began to soften add the peppers and onion to the skillet also. Cook, stirring frequently until the peppers and onion have began to soften. The sweet potatoes should be nearly cooked at this point.
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Add back in the ground beef and sprinkle with the cumin, paprika, salt, and pepper. Mix together and cook until everything is cooked through and hot.
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While the skillet is cooking, in a blender add the mayo, minced pepper, cumin, lime juice, and salt. Blend until smooth. If sauce is to thick add water in tsp amounts until desired consistency is reached.
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Serve the skillet hot with the mayo sauce poured over. Garnish with cilantro or serve over lettuce if desired.
Recipe Notes
Chipotle peppers can be found in the ethnic food section of most grocery stores. They are usually canned with adobo sauce. I like to freeze the remaining sauce and peppers in a small container to use in the future!
To make the sauce less spicy use less chipotle pepper or just use adobo sauce instead of a real pepper.
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- Cajun Asparagus and Sausage Skillet | Whole 30, Paleo, Gluten Free
- Citrus and Herb Roasted Chicken | Whole 30, Paleo, Gluten Free
Oh Yum! I love a good southwestern inspired meal and seriously can not wait to try this chipotle sauce on everythinggggg!!
Have a jar on hand at all times because you will want to pour it on everything! Thanks Lauren!
Love all the colors!
Thanks Suzy! Don’t colorful foods just taste better?
Looks delicious, I love that you used sweet potatoes.
Thanks Celeste! Sweet potatoes are definitely a staple at my house!
This is definitely my kind of meal! And I’m loving that chipotle sauce. I bet it’s good on so many things!
It goes great on everything. Salad, burgers, veggies, with a spoon! It’s great!
What an extraordinary recipe! I love all the flavours you’ve used here, but I’ve never made anything like this before. I want to make this soon!
Thank you Elizabeth! Be sure to let me know how it goes if you give it a try!
Okay full disclosure, I am a pansy when it comes to spicy foods. (Yes I live in New Orleans where Cajun is king!) but this sounds amazing and it sounds like something that my boyfriend would fall out of his chair over! I am going to have to make it and just take a little portion out of the pan before I really turn up the heat! Thanks for another great recipe Hayley!
Lauren! For shame that you live where some of the best spicy food in the world is! I would definitely make two separate batches of the chipotle sauce because that’s where some serious heat can come in! I hope you and Matt love it!
Oh yum I absolutely love anything in a skillet & the pictures just show us the intensity of this dish! Seems really flavour packed!! My kids for some reason do not like sweet potato, even though they ate it in copious amounts as babies (that’s probably why) lol
Will be giving this a try for sure!
Thanks for another awesome recipe!
I love the simplicity of this meal! I seriously do not own a single cast iron skillet & I do all the cooking in my house. You are inspiring me to write it on my birthday list. 😉
Absolutely loved this recipe! I didn’t have all the ingredients for the chipotle sauce but I had Chipotle Seasoning from Tastefully Simple and mixed it with mayo and lime juice. Threw a fried egg on top because I was extra hungry after my workout. Delish!!
So glad you loved it Jeanna! And an egg sounds like the perfect topping. I think I’m going to have to do that sometime this week because it sounds so good!
The best recipe I’ve found in a long time. My family and I now eat this meal once a week! SO DELICIOUS! We also use the chipolte mayo on other meals as a substitute for sour cream. Love it!!!
Thank you for your kind words Christina! That really makes my day. And the chipotle mayo as a sour cream substitute is GENIUS!
Honestly, this all sounded great in theory, but didn’t come out well in actuality. The potatoes were both burnt on the outside and hard on the inside before I fixed them with another cooking method. There is WAY too much food by volume to fit in a skillet and far too little seasoning. I had to doctor it up with at least 4 times the amount of seasoning required and added Sazon, garlic powder, chipotle chile powder, onion powder, and black pepper. The chipotle mayo has way too much mayo to seasoning – I cut the mayo in half and still had to quadruple the spice blend and add more.
In short, great concept, very poor execution.
I’m sorry this recipe didn’t work out well for you Cecily! I haven’t had any of those issues making it in my testing. But I will certainly revisit this and see if I can figure out what’s going wrong. Thank you for your feedback!