Tasty Taco Salad
Make a wonderfully tasty Taco Salad without any chemicals or added preservatives in it, without using any cooking oil or salad dressings. It’s not only tasty, it’s healthy, good for you and it isn’t full of extra calories or blood-sugar-raising carbohydrates.
Prep Time30 mins
Cook Time16 mins
Total Time46 mins
Servings: 4
Ingredients
4 Uncooked Tortillas
Salad Ingredients
- 1/2 head Crisp crunchy lettuce or desired greens shredded
- 2 Tomatoes diced into small chunks or use 12 – 16 cherry tomatoes cut in half
- 2 Avocados sliced in thin strips, chunks or mashed into a guacamole and added to the top of the salad
- 3/4 cup Nuts or seeds if desired I like sunflower seeds on mine
- 1 Cucumber diced into small chunks if desired
- 3 cups Taco Meat Mixture see recipe below
- 1 cup Cheese – Cheddar or your favorite mixture grated – as much or as little as desired
Taco Meat Mixture
- 1 lb hamburger browned and drained to remove excess fat
- 1 tbsp packaged Taco seasoning mix stirred into 1/2 cup of hot tap water. Use more or less, of the seasoning mix, depending on how spicy you want your meat mixture to be.
- Add cayanne pepper to taste if you want an extra spicy meat mixture. I use 1 tbsp McCormick original taco mix without the cayanne pepper.
Instructions
- Make Meat Mixture for Tacos
- Stir the seasoning mix into the water until it is dissolved, then stir it into the browned, drained meat.
- Simmer and cook for a few minutes until most of the water is gone, leaving a thin layer of the thickened sauce in the bottom of the pan.
- Stir well to coat all of the meat and use immediately or cool, refrigerate and reheat to use it later.
Preheat Oven to 350º F
- Just before putting tortillas into the fluted pans, (see below for info on fluted tortilla pans) prick them all over with a fork, making sure the fork tines go all the way through the tortillas.
- This will keep them from puffing up in the oven while baking, so the tortillas won’t fill the pans, leaving no room for your salads.
- Be sure to cook them immediately after pricking them or the holes will “heal over,” allowing them to puff up anyway.
- Place one tortilla in each fluted pan, (see below for info on fluted pans) gently pressing it into the grooves so it forms a pretty bowl shape.
- Immediately place the pans into the preheated oven on the middle rack.
Bake exactly 16 minutes
- Tortilla bowls will come out perfectly cooked, crispy all the way through, even on the bottoms, with light brown edges.
- Use immediately or set the cooled bowls in a dry place to use another time or another day.
- Pick your favorite fresh salad ingredients from above and fill your taco bowl to the top. (Note: I’m allergic to cheese so the photo of my taco salad doesn’t have any cheese on it.)
- Spoon the hot meat onto the salad, put grated cheese on top and eat immediately. YUM!
Notes
… Uncooked Tortillas
I only use Tortilla Land, medium size, soft taco flour tortillas. They have no hydrogenated additives in them so they are perishable and will be found in the refrigerated section of your grocery store. (I usually find them near the cheeses.)
If you are a single person, cooking for just one, you might want to repackage them when they are fresh, putting half of them into two freezer bags (with one “stay fresh packet” in each bag). The stay-fresh packets help to keep the tortillas from molding in the refrigerator if you don’t use all of them right away.
Special Equipment Needed
4 Fluted non-stick tortilla shell pans
Make sure the pans are 6-1/2 inches in diameter and that they are non-stick so you don’t have to grease them.
