Healthy Taco Salad
This is already a pretty light and healthy meal, but let’s talk about a few things you can do to make it healthier. But maybe at the top of that list is Taco Salad. Made with homemade taco meat and then layering in lots of veggies, this is such a light and healthy meal. This makes a great workweek lunch since it is delicious cold, but it is also the perfect nutritious dinner.
Ground Beef: Read below on replacing the beef with ground turkey or ground chicken.Homemade Taco Seasoning: This is made with chili powder, paprika, kosher salt, onion powder, garlic powder, cumin, and cayenne pepper. The spice breakdown is listed in the recipe card, but you will want to go to the post on making your own so that you can get the measurements for a big batch to always have it on hand.Tomato Sauce: This is what rounds out the taco meat and makes it delicious and saucy.Romaine Hearts: Read below on how to make quick work of prepping these.Roma Tomatoes: These hold up really well in the salad, but you could use any kind of tomato.Black Beans: This adds another burst of protein to the salad. If you are using canned beans, you will want to make sure that you drain and thoroughly rinse the beans.Corn: If it is in the summer months, you could use fresh corn cooked and cut from the cob. Otherwise, canned corn works very well.Tortilla Chips: I love the crunch these bring, but you could leave them out to make the dish a little lighter. You could also use Doritos and make this a Dorito Taco Salad.Olives: These are optional of course, but I love them on my taco salad.Green Onions: These add flavor, crunch, and color, but you could also use pickled red onions.Salsa and Sour Cream: The combination of these two works like a great dressing on the salad, but see below for other great dressing options.
Swap the ground beef out for low-fat ground turkey or ground chicken. You will need to add a little olive oil to cook the meat or cook it in a nonstick skillet with a little cooking spray. Otherwise, you can follow the recipe as written.Leave out the tortilla chips and the corn. Without them, this recipe could be considered low-carb.Use light sour cream. I notice almost no difference between light sour cream and regular, but the light has less fat and less calories.
Variations and Substitutions
One of the things I love about salads is how easy they are to change up. As mentioned above, I am using ground beef, but you could just as easily use ground turkey. Here are some other ways to mix this up:
Use my Jalapeño Ranch Dressing. The flavors would be perfect on this.Make my Ranch Dressing, but add in some taco seasoning. Since we already decided you are making a big batch of taco seasoning, you can spare two teaspoons to mix into some ranch for a great spin on a classic.My Creamy Garlic Dressing would be amazing on this.Instead of adding dressing, add another salsa or two. My Pico de Gallo or my Corn Salsa would be fantastic on this.Use my Fish Taco Sauce. It is a sauce that is meant to go on Fish Tacos, but would be delicious on this as well!
Make it a vegetarian salad. Take out the black beans listed above, and replace the meat in the recipe with the filling from my black bean tacos.Take out the turf and make it all surf. Instead of using ground meat, make the filling from my shrimp tacos.Go with chicken instead. Finally, another great alternative to beef is my crockpot taco chicken.Bulk it out while keeping it healthy. Adding my Cilantro Lime Quinoa to this salad will stretch it out, keep you fuller longer, and bring additional great flavor.
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If you make this amazing Taco Salad or any of my other recipes please leave me a comment and let me know what you think!
