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Beef taco salad is a flavorful and easy to make family meal that’s sure to be on repeat all summer long! It’s loaded with all your favorite taco goodies.
Love easy summer salads? Try this Mouthwatering Strawberry Spinach Salad, Honey Lime Poppy Seed Fruit Salad, Best Ever Creamy Pea Salad with Bacon, BLT Tortellini Pasta Salad, or this Classic Potato Salad Recipe.
Beef Taco Salad
Hi! It’s Natasha here from Salt & Lavender bringing you this easy beef taco salad recipe. Now that it’s warm out, I’m ALL about salads for dinner. I love salads that you can eat as a meal. This salad is good and filling – it has plenty of veggies, protein, and healthy fats. It also has a fun crunch from the Doritos. I have to say that not eating the rest of the bag of chips while I’m making this salad is the hardest part of this recipe!
The best part of this salad? The dressing. It’s super easy and kinda magical, actually. All it requires is two ingredients – salsa and sour cream. Use your favorite salsa and you’re guaranteed to love it. You can use low-fat sour cream if you wish. If you want to thin the dressing out a little bit, add some fresh lime juice.
How to make beef taco salad
- Brown the beef. Cook it in a skillet with the spices for 8-10 minutes or until it’s cooked through. If there’s excess fat, drain it.
- Prep your salad ingredients and add them to a large salad bowl.
- Make the dressing. Mix the salsa and sour cream together until smooth.
- Toss the salad. Add the Doritos last so they retain their crunch!
You can use pre-made taco seasoning in this Doritos taco salad if you like – I just like to make my own with spices I have on-hand.
More taco recipes you’ll love:
- Instant Pot Salsa Verde Chicken Tacos
- Easy Shrimp Tacos
- Grilled BBQ Chicken Tacos
- Beefy Baked Tacos
- {The BEST} Sweet Pork Tacos
- Breakfast Tacos
Beef Taco Salad
Ingredients
- 1 tablespoon olive oil
- 1 tablespoon chili powder
- 1 teaspoon garlic powder
- 1 teaspoon onion powder
- 1 teaspoon smoked paprika
- 1 teaspoon ground cumin
- 1 pound lean ground beef
Dressing:
- 3/4 cup sour cream
- 3/4 cup salsa
Salad:
- 6 cups romaine lettuce (chopped)
- 3/4 cup little tomatoes (grape or cherry, halved)
- 1/2 small red onion (chopped)
- 1 cup shredded cheese (e.g. cheddar or Tex-Mex blend)
- 1/2 cup canned corn (drained)
- 1/2 cup black beans (drained)
- 1/2 avocado (sliced/chopped)
- 1 cup Doritos (crushed)
- 1 tablespoon fresh cilantro (chopped - optional)
- Salt & pepper (to taste)
Instructions
- Add the oil, ground beef, and spices to a skillet over medium-high heat. Cook the beef until it's browned and cooked through, stirring occasionally (about 8-10 minutes). There should not be much (if any) fat to drain if you used lean ground beef. Just spoon the excess fat out if needed.
- While the beef is cooking, start to prep your other salad ingredients, and make the dressing by mixing the sour cream and salsa together.
- Add the salad ingredients to a large bowl. Once the beef is done, let it cool for a few minutes. Add the beef and Doritos to the salad last (so the Doritos don't get soggy). Toss the salad with the dressing, season with salt & pepper as needed, and serve immediately.
Video
Notes
- Serves 4+ as a main dish and more as a side.
- Want to make the beef spicy? Add in ½ teaspoon of cayenne pepper.
- Feel free to use ready-made taco seasoning instead of the spices I suggest if you wish.
Nutrition
Serves: 4
All nutritional information is based on third party calculations and is only an estimate. Each recipe and nutritional value will vary depending on the brands you use, measuring methods and portion sizes per household.
What would you use instead of cilantro? If you don’t have any .
You could just leave the cilantro out if you don’t have any on hand!
Thanks for this. Delicious and we will be adding this to our favourite recipes list.
Yummy salad and easy to make! Thanks!
Great idea to change up regular tacos.
Super easy to make!! Thank you for the delicious recipe.
Iam never disappointed in any recipe from your collection
This was delicious and easy
Thank you
Looks delicious! Can I make this the night before and eat it for lunch the next day? If yes, do I need to heat up the beef or do I eat it cold?
Yes, this is great salad to make ahead of time. It is best to keep the salad fixings separated and then add them together into the salad. The beef is best warmed up but it can be eaten cold.
What flavor of Doritos did you use?
Just the regular nacho flavor. You are welcome to use any type of Dorito you prefer though.
Looks great! Putting it on the menu. We’ve had three days of amazing sunshine here (in late February?!?!) and with this recipe I’m going to pretend it is summer (and hope the weatherman’s winter storm prediction is wrong for late this week…)
What kind of salsa did you use? It looks delicious
Hi Faith! I used Newman’s Own Salsa 🙂
Nice receipy. Thanks for sharing it with us.
love all of these things, I usually have them in a taco shell, but am trying to skip those, so this is much better, that is as a salad, thank you