Taco Salad Recipe Ideas to Try

If you order a taco salad in a restaurant, you are most likely going to end up with a bowl made out of a large fried tortilla (usually a corn tortilla) filled with lots of ground beef as well as some lettuce, tomatoes, cheese, and other taco fillings. You will probably also get sour cream and guacamole on the side, and the beef will usually be mixed with taco sauce or seasoning mix. Black olives and onions are sometimes added, and some recipes call for salsa instead of fresh tomatoes. These salads can be quite delicious, but contain a lot of calories and fat. A lot of people have come up with their own variations of the typical taco salad recipe, some of which are healthier.

Because tortilla bowls are not commonly available to home cooks, many taco salad recipe variations use tortilla chips instead. Of course there are some that skip the chips and do something totally different, like using tater tots as the base for the salad.

Some other variations that people use include adding salad dressing (usually ranch French or Catalina but sometimes Italian or thousand island), adding beans (usually pinto, kidney, or chili but also lentils or chickpeas), using chicken or ground turkey instead of beef, or using fresh avocado instead of guacamole, adding extra vegetables (including bell pepper and carrots), or adding sauce ingredients such as pickles, vinegar, lemon juice and mayonnaise. One recipe even uses BBQ sauce and chili powder instead of the traditional taco seasonings. There is also a version that adds pasta to make a pasta taco salad.

Basically, you can do whatever you want to create the perfect taco salad recipe for you. Take the ingredients you like best in tacos and mix them together to form your taco salad. If you want to make a healthier version, you would change the proportions so that the salad is heavy on vegetables and has less quantities of meat, cheese, and chips which form the largest part of traditional taco salads. Try it with chicken or ground turkey or even just beans to up on the healthiness quotient. Stay away from the added dressings and just make sure the meat or beans are well seasoned with taco spices in order to add flavor to the salad.