Name: Five-Ingredient BBQ Beef Tortilla Pie
Prep time: 15 min
Cook time: 15 min
Total time: 30 min
Ingredients: 1 pound ground beef (fat percentage not important); 3 8-inch flour tortillas; ¾ cup BBQ sauce (divided); 1 cup canned black beans (divided (rinsed and drained)); 1 cup shredded cheese (divided (cheddar, colby jack, etc.))

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This Five-Ingredient (!) BBQ Beef Tortilla Pie is a savory, satisfying main dish perfect for weeknights. It's ready in 30 minutes and uses simple ingredients. It's super customizable, too.

A wedge of beef tortilla pie being lifted by a spatula out of a cast iron pan to show the different layers.

Tortilla pies (or tortilla stacks, or whatever you want to call these) are one of my favorite versatile weeknight meals. You layer up tortillas, cooked meat, sauce, and cheese of some kind, then bake and slice into wedges for serving. Buffalo chicken tortilla pie is a long-ago reader favorite that continues to make the rounds on my dinner menu, too.

Here beef, tortillas, black beans, BBQ sauce, and cheese come together to create a hearty, flavorful dish that tastes like there's more to it going on than just five ingredients. A whole greater than the sum of its parts, if you will.

P.S. A different cuisine but equally quick and flavorful is this shortcut paneer skillet. A true weeknight MVP.

Reasons to Love This Recipe

This recipe is so easy, you barely have to follow it. The ingredients don't even really need to be measured!
Tortilla pies are quick. Since the meat is already cooked by the time of assembly, all you need is for the cheese to melt and you've got dinner on the table in under 30 minutes.
This is also a great recipe for adding a variety of vegetables, or leftover bits of this and that. Leftover sauteed kale, beans, squash, roasted sweet potatoes...it all works.

Recipe Ingredients

Separate containers of labeled ingredients on a marble board.

Ground beef: The fat is drained off so the fat percentage doesn't matter a ton, and give or take a pound of meat is plenty. You can also substitute in a different ground meat as you like.
Tortillas: I'm partial to flour as they often come in larger sizes. White whole wheat is a great way to add extra nutrition. 8- or 10-inch work.
BBQ sauce: Use your favorite! While I love a flavored homemade variety (like maple bourbon BBQ sauce), for simplicity's sake I often go with store-bought.
Black beans: These provide some fiber and heft. Rinsing and draining canned beans removes a substantial amount of the sodium.
Cheese: Many different types work. I usually use a blend of what I have on hand: cheddar, jack, etc.

Step-by-Step Instructions

This basic recipe doesn't require much explanation, but when has that ever stopped a food blogger from writing more vs. less on the Internet?

Start by cooking and crumbling the ground beef in a pan. Once fully cooked, drain off the fat and transfer beef to a bowl. Stir in BBQ sauce.

Crumbled ground beef stirred together in a bowl with BBQ sauce.

Now comes assembly. Lay one tortilla in pan or baking dish, then brush BBQ sauce over top. Go right to the edges with the sauce to ensure that the perimeter of the tortilla doesn't dry out while this BBQ beef tortilla pie is baking.
Top with half of the beef mixture, then scatter the beans.

BBQ sauce being brushed on a tortilla (left) and topped with ground beef and black beans (right).

Top with cheese. Repeat this process one more time: tortilla, BBQ sauce, beef, beans, cheese.
End on a tortilla, brush with BBQ sauce, and top with the remaining cheese.

Grated cheese added to the tortilla pie mixture (left) and the stack all assembled before baking (right).

Bake in the oven for 15 minutes or so, or until the cheese has melted and everything is hot throughout. Let it rest for several minutes after coming out of the oven so it holds together better once sliced.

Beef tortilla pie in a cast iron skillet with one wedge removed, with a metal spatula resting on top.

Recipe Tips and Tricks

To cut down on dirty dishes, use an oven-safe pan to cook the beef, wipe it out, then use it to assemble the beef tortilla pie.
You can certainly bake this tortilla pie on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper or aluminum foil, but I like to use a smaller pan with close edges so when slicing the filling doesn't spill out everywhere. Usually I use an 8- or 10-inch round cast iron skillet, to coincide with the tortilla size.
For a vegetarian spin on this recipe, BBQ tempeh kale tortilla pie is always a hit, even in my carnivorous household.

A section of tortilla pie on a plate, garnished with cilantro and served with a dollop of avocado sauce.

If you’ve enjoyed this recipe, I’d love for you to leave a star rating in the recipe card and/or a comment review below!