Healthy Taco Salad.
Today I’m sharing one of my favorite new salads. The best part of this recipe is that there is no recipe! It’s a throw-together-what-you-have kinda dish that I’ve been craving over and over again. Have a favorite vegetable? Add it to the bowl. Don’t like tomatoes, keep them out. I love “recipes” that I can easily adapt to my taste.
The other great thing about this salad is that everything can be chopped ahead of time and stored in the fridge. When you want to eat, pull everything out and everyone can make their own salad with exactly what they like. When I first made this salad a couple weeks ago, I ate the leftovers nearly every day for lunch for a week. It made a quick, easy meal that I felt good about eating.
To make this salad a lot healthier than traditional taco salads, I skipped the high calorie taco shell bowl it normally comes in and instead added cooked brown rice. I also left all the veggies raw for maximum nutritional value and left out any salad dressing. It tasted great without any dressing, but if you’d like some, try my { creamy cilantro dressing }. It would be delicious with that!
Here’s what I had in my salad…
- Romaine lettuce
- Ground Beef (I used one pound of 90/10 which is leaner and cooked it with 1 tsp. cumin, 1 tsp. chili powder, 1 tsp. garlic powder, salt and pepper.)
- Brown Rice
- Orange pepper, diced
- Roma Tomato, diced
- Avocado, diced (Which I accidentally left out of the picture above.)
- Cilantro, chopped
- Shredded cheese
This salad would also be delicious with…
- Corn kernels
- Red peppers
- Jicama
- Black beans
- Salsa
Justin and I really enjoyed this salad. I love finding new ways to make salad a main course meal. With this dinner, I don’t feel like I’m missing anything from a great Mexican meal other than extra calories and fat!
Tell me, what would your perfect taco salad have in it?
Love the picture… I love eating pretty thigs. We have been eating a huge salad and soup for dinner a lot. My husband’s salad is boring.. eggs, bacon bits, cheese and catalina dressing. But considering when I married him he would not eat a salad and the salad he ate was ice burg..yuck.
As for me, depending on taste I put these ingredients in mine… mind you not all of them together, but combination…cranraisins, nuts, olives,beans, cucumbers, carrots, green pepper, or any color pepper, fresh dill, celantro, oranges,apples, green onions, shallots and probably more that I am not thinkin about.
I LOVE salads with nuts and cranberries too! I think you could make just about any dish into a salad and it would taste fantastic
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