Ensalada De Taco

In my house, we love tacos.  We eat tacos, burritos, or something in between all the time.  In Korea it is possible to get taco seasoning, but where we have to go is an hour away from home to get it.  I have gotten pretty good at making my own, but why do it if you don't have to?  It has gotten to the point that for holidays involving gifts, one of my aunts sends us taco seasoning, which we love!  

Photo found on facebook, not something I made.

So the special part of this salad is not the salad, as that could be made any number of ways, but the special part of this particular salad is the bowl..  I started off with an idea from a picture that my mom posted on facebook from Tastefully Simple.  This picture had a muffin tin turned upside down, and tortilla bows made on top and baked.  

I thought it was a brilliant idea.  I went home and wanted to try...only the only tortillas I had were too big for the tiny muffin tin I had.  So I improvised.  I turned bowls upside down, and draped tortillas over them instead.  I used foil to hold the edges down,  and I oiled the bowls to keep them from sticking.  I followed the directions that came with the photo which was bake for 10 minutes on 375.  Since mine were not being baked quite the same, they took a bit longer to cook, and eventually I did take the foil off to get them brown and toasted.  My first batch stuck to the bowls.  So the second round, I lined the bowl with foil, and used foil over the top.  Once again it took a long time for it to cook, but it worked better the second time.  Mine did not turn out as pretty as this picture, but oh well...they are still fun to make and eat, and even better are having baked taco salad shells, not fried!  

So anyway, variations of my salad are pretty simple.  I get red lettuce or some form of leaf lettuce whenever I can find it.  I chop it up and put it on the bottom. 

The photo above then has long strips of peppers and onions along with garlic and ground beef.  This is my fajita style salad.  The mixture is combined with taco seasoning, following the directions for the packet I use. Then I make a bed of lettuce on the bottom of the bowl, add the meat and fajita veggies, sprinkle cheese, and cover with pretty tomatoes and maybe salsa and sour cream.  That is the picture above.  

Here is my attempt from last night.  I think the first time I used smaller, deeper bowls because the second time, my bowl are not as deep as they were the first time I did it.  

In the oven, trying to get them nice and crispy 

(remember the foil underneath though, these are the

ones that stuck!)

It kinda turned out a little more like a tostada shell today than a taco bowl.

Below, is how I made my salads last night.  

First I sauteed a medium sized onion 

(I used half of it in my beans) and set it aside.  I cooked my beans rinsed out the pan for the ground beef.  I browned most of the beef, and added garlic and the reserved onion to the beef while it was cooking and I let it cook until it was no longer pink.  Once it was cooked all the way through, I followed directions on the back of a taco seasoning packet to season the beef.

I washed the lettuce, and the tomatoes, and cut them all up into bite sized pieces.  The lettuce I sliced both horizontally and vertically, and the tomatoes I just sliced in half because they were cherry tomatoes in the first place.  

To assemble the taco salad, First I put down a bed of lettuce.  Then I added a few scoops of beans, and the seasoned ground beef.  Next I put on a big scoop or two of my homemade pineapple salsa.  I then put on some grated cheddar cheese, and some homemade sour cream.  

Once again, a petty incredible meal that really is not very difficult to make.  My husband loves it, and I love that we are getting our veggies!  

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