Vegan taco salad with spicy black beans

Name: Vegan Taco Salad with Spicy Black Beans
Prep time: 10 min
Cook time: 15 min
Total time: 25 min
Yield: 4 people
Ingredients: 4 large wheat tortillas; 1 teaspoon extra virgin olive oil; 2 garlic cloves (minced); ¾ cup onion (chopped small); 1 ½ cups black beans (1 15 oz can, drained and rinsed); 1 teaspoon cumin; 1 teaspoon ancho chili powder; ½ teaspoon oregano; ½ teaspoon coriander; ½ teaspoon paprika; 1 Tablespoon lime juice; ¼ cup water; Salt (to taste); 4 cups chopped romaine or green leaf lettuce; 1 large tomato (chopped); 1 red bell pepper (chopped); 1 batch guacamole; Optional: creamy cashew dressing

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Today’s vegan taco salad recipe is filled with spicy black beans and stuffed inside a baked tortilla bowl. A filling & flavor packed lunch!

It’s a lot easier to eat salad in the summer. Not only are fruits and vegetables at their juiciest, it’s when the weather’s sticky, hydrating produce beckons like Forever 21 to a 14-year-old.

Once the days get darker and stepping outside without a jacket becomes an impossibility, salad loses some of its luster. It’s hard to get geared up for romaine when you’d rather climb into a Jacuzzi of soup and bread.

Still, raw vegetables are good for the body and the palate. It just takes a bit of finagling to make them more appealing in the cooler months.

I like to give salads a fall makeover by adding at least one warm element. It could be homemade croutons, baked tofu, or roasted chickpeas.

To add interest to this vegan taco salad, I added a baked tortilla bowl and spicy black beans. Plus, a healthy dollop of guacamole!

Vegan taco salad

When I was in high school, a taco salad was one of my standard orders at Perkins, the casual chain known for their bread bowls and pies. A bunch of us would slide into a booth after play practice, hang out after a school dance, or grab an appetizer after a movie.

I haven’t been to a Perkins location in at least a decade, but there was a time in my life when that diner was a regular haunt. The only people who were there more often were the police officers ordering breakfast late into the night.

The taco salads came in a crisp bowl that could be cracked into the mixture of lettuce, or even used to scoop up the salad like a jagged, handmade nacho. The shell crackled under my teeth with every bite of iceberg, tomato, and taco filling.

These days, I make vegan taco salads at home.

How to bake a tortilla bowl

Instead of deep-frying the bowls, I use a metal bowl with a curled shape to bake the tortilla into the perfect taco salad vessel.

If you don’t own such a bowl, no worries. A medium-sized glass bowl that’s oven-safe will do the trick just fine. Simply place your tortilla into it and press it against the sides. Bake for 10 minutes.

I fill my taco salads with spicy black beans.

You’ll find these black beans all over my blog, because they make leftovers that are rife for repurposing. They can be placed in tacos, obviously, on taco pizza, or spread across puffy nachos.

Add any other favorite taco salad fillings like tomatoes, romaine, guacamole, jalapeño slices, and/or cilantro. With a little spicy kick, those raw vegetables are primed for fall and winter until it’s July again and raw tacos beckon.