Healthy Taco Salad
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Our Healthy Taco Salad recipe makes a fantastic low carb meal. It’s easy to meal prep and customize with your family’s favorite toppings! This post is sponsored by my friends at ButcherBox.
Making a healthy taco salad with ground beef is possible! With crisp fresh veggies, lean beef, and a tangy yogurt-based dressing, this salad recipe makes a wholesome, nutritious meal.
One serving of this low carb ground beef dinner has a whopping 62 grams of protein! It’s hearty, filling, and so good!
Add your favorite taco toppings and make this delicious meal in just 25 minutes!
Some people think salads are boring, but they don’t have to be! We’ve got a ton of healthy options like Italian chopped salad, chicken cobb, and blueberry salad, but this taco salad is too flavorful to be boring!
We also have healthier recipes for Mexican inspired foods like guacamole, and plenty of taco-flavored options, too! In addition to this healthy taco salad recipe, consider making our healthy taco skillet, crock pot chicken tacos, or taco bake recipes!
liz’s tips for healthy taco salad
- Break up the ground beef as it cooks. This tool is great for breaking up ground meat, and it will help you avoid having any large pieces of meat.
- Multi-task to save time! We like to save time by chopping the veggies ahead of time, but you can do it while the ground beef is cooking if that’s easier for you. Or, if you’re a meal prep recipe lover, you may already have some cooked ground beef in your freezer! If that step is already done, use this time to make the taco salad dressing.
- To create a super creamy dressing, combine the ingredients in a food processor or small blender. Of course, a whisk will work, but the consistency may not be as thick as it will be with a blender.
- To prevent soggy leftovers, don’t add your dressing until you’re ready to eat.
Ingredients
Substitutions
Olive Oil: You can substitute with avocado oil, butter, or ghee.
Ground Beef: There’s a lot of flavor in fat, but you don’t want so much that the salad becomes greasy. We like to use a lean blend of ground sirloin; either 85/15 or 90/10. To reduce the calories and fat, you can make a healthy taco salad with ground turkey or ground chicken.
Romaine Lettuce: If you aren’t a fan of romaine, use healthy greens like spinach, kale or other lettuce of choice.
Taco Seasoning: We like to use homemade taco seasoning. It’s easy to make and lower in sodium. This is our favorite premade taco seasoning.
Tomatoes: You can use any type of tomatoes in this recipe, even canned diced tomatoes or Rotel will work.
Black Olives, Avocado, and Red Onion: Feel free to skip any of these toppings if you don’t like them, or swap them out for your favorite toppings!
Black beans: You can skip the beans or swap the black beans for pinto or kidney beans.
Salsa: We like to swap out traditional salsa for pico de Gallo when fresh tomatoes are in season. You could use a different flavor, too. Some pineapple mango salsa or fresh corn salsa would be delicious!
Dressing: Making our healthy taco salad dressing is optional, but it’s really delicious! Otherwise, you might want to make our healthy avocado ranch dressing recipe, or buy a chipotle ranch dressing. Check out these healthy salad dressing recipes for other ideas!
We used our favorite lean ground beef from ButcherBox in this recipe. We’ve been members for over 6 years, and it makes our life so much easier!
ButcherBox delivers high quality meat to your door. Their beef is grass fed and grass finished! They also have organic, free range chicken and wild caught seafood.
Buying high quality meat at the grocery store can get really expensive, really quickly! ButcherBox saves us money and tons of time by being able to skip the store!
If you’ve ever thought of trying ButcherBox, check out our ButcherBox Review to learn why we highly recommend it!
How to Make Your healthy Taco Salad
This is just a summary of the steps involved in making the recipe. Scroll down to the recipe card for the full instructions, or click on the Jump to Recipe button, below.
- Brown ground beef then stir in taco seasoning and water. Stir to coat.
- Evenly divide the toppings and cooked taco meat across 2 salad bowls.
Serving Size
One serving of this recipe is about 5 cups of salad greens/vegetables and toppings, plus 5 ounces cooked ground beef and 3 tablespoons homemade taco salad dressing.
Recipe Variations
This taco salad is fantastic as-is, but here are some other variations that are just as delicious:
- Swap the protein. Instead of using ground beef, top the salad with chili lime shrimp or salsa verde chicken, or use leftover healthy chicken nuggets to make a chicken taco salad.
- Lower Carb/Keto Friendly: Leave out the black beans for a keto taco salad.
- Vegetarian / Vegan: To make a meatless meal, you can use cooked lentils or a plant-based ground beef substitute. Depending on what you use, you’ll need to adjust the cooking time.
- To reduce the calories and fat, skip the avocado, cheese, and/or olives to reduce the calories and fat in the ground beef salad. Instead, you might want to include more vegetables.
- Additional topping ideas: Consider adding crushed tortilla chips, diced bell peppers, sour cream, marinated vegetables, pineapple mango salsa or even fire-roasted corn!
storage
If at all possible, enjoy every bit of this meal on the day you make it, because after it’s dressed, the lettuce and other toppings will become wet and soggy.
This being said, you can keep any leftover taco salad in an airtight container in the fridge for about 3 days.
Or, to prevent soggy salad leftovers, just leave the dressing off and let everyone add dressing to their individual serving.
Meal Prep Information
The cooked taco meat will keep for up to 5 days in the fridge, or in the freezer for up to 3 months. Be sure to store the cooked meat in an airtight container or freezer-safe meal prep container.
Other Healthy Taco-Inspired Recipes
Looking for other Healthy Dinners? Check out these Quick Healthy Dinner Recipes! Click here to grab our free healthy 30 minute dinners cookbook.
Healthy Taco Salad
Ingredients
For the salad:
- ½ tablespoon olive oil
- 1 lb lean ground beef or ground turkey
- 1 ½ tablespoons taco seasoning
- ¼ cup water
- 8 cups romaine lettuce chopped
- ½ cup cherry tomatoes
- ½ cup black olives halved
- ½ cup cheddar cheese
- ½ cup cubed avocado
- ¼ cup red onion diced
- ½ cup black beans
For the dressing:
- ¼ cup nonfat greek yogurt
- 2 tablespoons salsa
- ¼ teaspoon garlic powder
- ¼ teaspoon onion powder
- ⅛ teaspoon black pepper
- 1 tablespoon lime juice juice of half of a lime
Instructions
- Heat a medium skillet over medium high heat. Add olive oil and heat for one minute. Add ground meat and cook for 12-15 minutes until browned. We love this tool for breaking up ground meat!
- While the ground meat cooks, prep the dressing.
- Combine the dressing ingredients in a food processor or small blender. Blend until smooth.
- Once the meat has cooked, add taco seasoning and water to the skillet. Stir well to coat the meat in seasonings.
- Assemble the salads. Chop lettuce and vegetables. Evenly divide the ingredients across 2 salad bowls.
- Top the salads with cooked taco meat and dressing. Enjoy!
This recipe is quick to make, and yummy to eat!!
I especially love the ‘dressing’!! Even tastier after sitting in fridge for a day!!
So good, so easy, perfect for family dinner night. My kids (2 & 4) both loved it.
SO GOOD!!! Made this for dinner for a couple nights this week–stored the dressing and meat separate from the salad and it stores super well!
We love this recipe and will be adding it to our regular rotation!