Make Ahead Taco Salad

This make ahead taco salad is perfect for parties and potlucks, or any time you want an amazingly delicious salad! Enjoy!

I love bringing this make ahead taco salad to get togethers. It can be made a couple of days ahead of time, and it always disappears quickly! Get ready for rave reviews and recipe requests every time you serve this delicious salad!

Let’s talk about our taco meat!

Making your own taco meat is easy to do and it’s delicious. I used a 95% lean ground beef mixture to make my taco meat, but you can use any kind you’d like. You’ll just want to make sure after cooking your beef, you drain the grease well. You can substitute with ground turkey or even with ground chicken if you’d like. To our cooked meat, we add water, tomato paste, and a homemade taco seasoning mix. Our taco seasoning consists of chili powder, cumin, garlic powder, paprika, salt, onion powder, pepper, and oregano. You’ll bring this mixture to a boil, then decrease the heat and simmer until it thickens, which takes 5-10 minutes. Since we’re making this salad ahead of time, it’s important to let the taco meat cool completely. If you want to serve this salad immediately, you can serve the meat either warm or cooled.

What other ingredients go into this make ahead taco salad?

To make this taco salad, we add just a few simple and incredibly flavorful ingredients. You can either layer your salad in a large rectangular glass or plastic container. When layering this salad, you’ll want to start with your cooled taco meat and spread it in an even layer in the container. Then we add chopped green onions, cherry tomatoes, and fresh chopped cilantro. You’ll just add these evenly over the taco meat. We then top this evenly with shredded cheese. I used colby jack cheese, but you can substitute with cheddar, colby, Monterey jack, mozzarella, or pepper jack cheese if you’d like. Whichever cheese you choose, I recommend buying a block of cheese and shredding it yourself. We then evenly top our salad with chopped lettuce. My favorite lettuce choices are iceberg and romaine lettuce. You can also use a prepared salad mix if you’d like.

What’s the best dressing to serve with this make ahead taco salad?

You have some awesome options for the low carb dressing you use for this salad! For our taco salad I made a quick and easy dressing by combining equal parts salsa and sour cream. This is a flavorful dressing which goes perfectly with this salad. You can make your dressing as mild or as spicy as you’d like by choosing to use mild, medium, or hot salsa. When buying salsa, you’ll want to check nutritional labels to make sure there is no added sugar or other ingredients you don’t want in your salsa. You can also serve this salad with keto ranch dressing or blue cheese dressing. For a fun change up, you can also serve this salad with keto Russian dressing or with keto thousand island dressing. Another of our favorites is keto sun dried tomato vinaigrette.

Need some more delicious keto salads? Here are a few of our favorites!

Caesar Salad with Keto Croutons

Classic Wedge Salad

Keto Cobb Salad with Blue Cheese Dressing

Keto Spinach Salad with Warm Bacon Dressing

Helpful Hints:

*You can substitute with ground turkey or even with ground chicken if you’d like.

*Depending on your heat preference, you can use mild, medium, or hot salsa to make your dressing.

Main Kitchen Equipment and Utensils:

• Small mixing bowl
• Large skillet
• Measuring cups
• Measuring spoons

Splash of Encouragement:

***For we have great joy and consolation in your love, because the hearts of the saints have been refreshed by you, brother. Philemon 1:7***