Vegetarian Taco Salad

Day 13

It's Taco Saturday!

Vegetarian Taco Salad

Tacos with Veggie Ground

Tacos/taco salad is another popular meal that easily converts to a vegetarian version. We've had tacos twice since we've stopped eating meat and both other times we used Yves Veggie Ground. The first time we used the spicy kind but we found it was wayyy too spicy. The 2nd time we used the original and it was much better. Veggie Ground is okay, and we'll use it again, but we really try to limit our soy.

Tacos with Beans

This time we used beans to make our tacos. We both liked it better than the veggie ground; it has a better texture and a better flavor, too. Again, Laura was our chef, as she usually is when we have beans.

Taco salad ingredients

The Beans

Beans are a bit more high maintenance than veggie ground which is packaged and ready to eat. But the beans, since we generally avoid canned beans, do require some prep. Here's how Laura described making them:

Beans simmering

Steps:

1. Bring the beans to a boil and then turn off the heat and leave to soak for an hour. This is called a quick soak. Then, drain the water off to take out the fartiness. 
2. Add fresh water to them and and simmer for about 40 minutes or until tender. She made 4.5 or 5 cups of beans, starting with 2.5 cups of dry beans. 
3. Healthy sauté an onion and a few cloves of garlic in vegetable broth.
4. Mash 1/3 of the cooked beans with the onions, garlic and 1/2 cup vegetable broth. Add 1.5 tbsp taco seasoning. We bought a kit this time, which contained the seasoning, but usually we just make our own taco seasoning.
5. Add the rest cooked beans, another 1.5 tbsp of the taco seasoning and a little more vegetable broth to the mashed mixture just to wet it a bit and reduce until no liquid remains. 

Taco bean mixture

Taco Kit

Most taco kits contain the basics. The one we got contained:

• 10 taco shells
• Mild taco sauce
• Taco seasoning mix

Old El Paso Taco Kit

Place the taco shells on a baking sheet and heat in the oven for a few minutes to make them warm and crispy before serving.

Warmed tacos and seasoned refried beans

Toppings

Time to add the toppings! Most people serve tacos with these same toppings, except for maybe the avocado and scallions.

• Cheddar
• Avocado
• Tomato (chopped)
• Boston Bib lettuce (shredded)
• Scallions
• Sour cream
• Salsa

Taco toppings

Assembling Your Taco Salad

I suppose you can assemble your taco salad any way you choose, but here we always start with a big bed of lettuce, followed by a healthy serving of beans, crumble up the taco shells, and then start with the toppings: tomatoes, cheddar, salsa, scallions, avocado and sour cream.

Assembled taco salad

Why Taco Salad is Amazeballs

This is a good meal in a lot of ways. It has flavor, and feels like a naughty meal, but there is a lot of nutrition to be found in a vegetarian taco. The shells don't contain a lot but there is nutritional value in everything else. The cheese and sour cream add more fat than needed, and also are the only things preventing this from being a vegan dish. If they were skipped this meal would be much healthier. The avocado adds fat too, but the good kind, and the tomato and lettuce are nutritious veggies - with the exception of iceberg lettuce. Beans, onions and garlic are also very nutritious. 

Reviews/Comments

This is the kind of meal that you eat and feel full but not yucky. I give it an 8.5 as far as enjoyment. Laura gave it the same and Missy loved it too! It was pretty awesome.

Make it Vegan

Just skip the cheddar and sour cream. A non-dairy yoghurt would be a good substitute for the sour cream. There are supposedly good cheese substitutes out there too, but I haven't found a cheddar one that I like yet.