Taco Salad
Spiced beef, crisp lettuce, cheese, and crushed tortilla chips — taco night with a fork.
Ingredients
- 400 g Ground beef
- 1 head Romaine lettuce
- 2 Tomato
- 80 g Melting cheese
- 4 Corn tortillas
- 1 tsp Ground cumin
- 1 tsp Chili powder
- 1 tbsp Neutral oil
- ¾ tsp Salt
- 1 Lime (optional)
Method
- Heat the oil in a wide skillet over high heat until shimmering.
- Brown the ground beef in the hot skillet, breaking it up with a spoon, until crusty in spots.
- Season the beef with the cumin, chili powder, and salt and cook a minute more until fragrant.
- Crisp the tortillas in a dry pan or a hot oven, then break them into shards.
- Chop the romaine into bite-size ribbons and dice the tomatoes.
- Grate the cheese and cut the lime into wedges.
- Layer the lettuce, spiced beef, tomato, and cheese in bowls, squeeze the lime over, and top with the tortilla shards.
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About Taco Salad
Taco salad takes everything appealing about a taco — spiced beef, crisp lettuce, cheese, tomato, and shards of fried tortilla — and rearranges it into a bowl you eat with a fork. It is a Tex-Mex creation more than a traditional Mexican one, born from the American taco-night table, and its charm is that it delivers all the familiar flavors without the fuss of assembling and eating handhelds. The ground beef is browned hard until it develops crusty, caramelized spots, then seasoned with cumin and chili powder so it turns fragrant and deeply savory. Crushed tortillas, crisped in a dry pan or hot oven, stand in for the taco shell as scattered crunch.
Eating it is all about the interplay of temperatures and textures: warm spiced beef against cool crisp romaine, melting cheese, juicy tomato, and a squeeze of lime that ties it together with acidity. It is casual, generous food — good for feeding a table quickly, or for using up taco-night ingredients in a lighter, greener format. Because the components are layered rather than cooked together, everyone can build their bowl to taste. The trick to keeping it from going limp is to add the tortilla shards and lime only at the very end, so the crunch and brightness land at full strength.
Taco Salad: frequently asked questions
How many calories are in Taco Salad?
A serving has about 419 calories — 27.5g protein, 22.8g carbs, 24.8g fat, 5.8g fiber. Figures are estimated from the ingredient amounts and will shift with your portions and brands.
Is it high in protein?
Each serving has about 27.5g of protein, roughly 26% of its calories.
Is Taco Salad gluten-free?
Based on its ingredients, Taco Salad has no gluten-containing components, so it's naturally gluten-free — as always, check that any packaged ingredients you use are certified gluten-free to be safe.
Do I need every ingredient to make Taco Salad?
The core ingredients are essential, but you can leave out lime — it's optional and mainly there for extra flavor or finish.
How many servings does Taco Salad make?
This recipe makes 4 servings. In the app you can scale it up or down and the ingredient amounts adjust automatically.