In episode 094 we are making a Frito Taco Salad that makes a great meatless dinner, but is still super filling and flavorful. The salad will only take about 15 minutes to make, and the best part… it has Fritos in it!!
No need for side dishes here. Just large bowls and a fork. (but if you want to bulk it up you can certainly add some quesadillas or cheese quesadillas).
Transcript
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Intro: Welcome, welcome everybody, to another episode of Let’s Make Dinner, your audio library of amazing dinner recipes you can always get on the table. I’m your host, Susie Weinrich.
Susie Weinrich: All right. Hello. Hello, everybody. Welcome to another episode here. I’m so excited you’re here. It is Thursday and I am ready to think about making dinner.
So last week we did a salad recipe for a Grilled Chicken Caesar salad. We’re going to double dip here, and we are going to make another salad for dinner tonight. We are making a Frito Taco salad. This is going to be a meatless Monday-type recipe. This is a meatless salad. However, you could add some grilled chicken or some ground beef if you’d like. But if you like to do a meatless dinner every once in a while, this is going to be a great option for you. I mean, a really, really good option because it’s super flavorful. It has beans, which add a little bit of protein, and it has chips. I love chips. It has Fritos in it, and I think that that just makes this salad. It is so delicious.
Tips and Tricks: So let’s get into a couple of tips and tricks for this salad. There’s not going to be a ton today, and actually, the recipe goes really quick too, so we’re going to be in and out really quickly.
First of all, let’s talk about the lettuce you’re going to use. It is made traditionally with iceberg lettuce. It’s what I use. I know there’s not a ton of nutritional value in iceberg lettuce, but it is a great base for the salad. It’s nice and crispy. But I know that a lot of people have very strong opinions about whether or not they eat iceberg lettuce. So if you prefer to use a romaine, absolutely you could sub that in. I probably wouldn’t go with a spring mix or any kind of really tender lettuce here. You need something that’s hearty that’s going to hold up to the dressing, the beans, the sauce, the cheese, the crunchy Fritos. So romaine is probably a better secondary option.
Now if you do choose to go with the iceberg lettuce, I love this tip. When you chop up iceberg lettuce, there is a large core that’s at the bottom, and that’s basically the stem end of the iceberg lettuce. To remove that, I love this tip. You take the whole entire head of lettuce. Make sure you have that core side on the bottom and hit it really hard on the countertop. That pops the core up into the lettuce, and then you can just pull it right out and all of the hard bits come with it. Perfect tip. Definitely use that in your kitchen.
Now, another ingredient that you need is called Catalina Dressing. It’s an orange dressing that looks like French dressing, but it doesn’t quite taste the same. It is the perfect sweet, tangy, tart dressing for the salad. Now you don’t need a ton, so if you’re not going to use it again or you’re not going to use it for a while, I would just buy one of the smallest little bottles that they have. They usually come in a small little bottle that just has a few ounces in it, and I would grab that bottle at the grocery store.
Another ingredient you need is chili beans. For chili beans, you want to make sure that you buy the chili beans in sauce. You want it to have that sauce because that actually becomes kind of part of the dressing of the salad. When I was growing up, we always used Brooks’s chili beans, and so that’s usually what I look for in the grocery store, and I like to just buy a mild chili bean in sauce. Now, if you like it spicy and your family likes it spicy, then kick it up a notch and go with the hot. You do not want to drain all of the sauce off of those beans. Maybe there’s a little bit of extra juicy, loosey juicy on the top. You can get rid of that, but then once it starts to get thick, you want to make sure you save that and that goes into the salad.
All right. So I think those are all of my tips and tricks for this recipe. So let’s go ahead and get into making the full recipe for your Frito Taco salad.
Frito Taco Salad Recipe: This is going to take about two minutes. Are you ready? So you’re going to start by washing and prepping your lettuce. Whenever you’re making a salad, you want to make sure that the leaves are nice and dry so that the salad dressing actually adheres to the leaves of the salad. Go ahead and wash, dry up the lettuce, and then pop that in a large bowl.
Then you’re going to take the can of chili beans, pour that over the lettuce, and then pour in your desired amount of Catalina dressing. Then go ahead and toss that all together. That is the base of the salad, which is basically the lettuce and the dressing.
Next, you’re going to add two cups of Fritos. For this salad, I do like to just use the classic Fritos. You know, they have all sorts of different flavors of Fritos now, and different sizes like the scoops. I just like the regular old Fritos. But if you’ve got something else or your family likes a different type of Frito, use whatever you guys like.
So add in two cups of Fritos and one cup of fresh chopped tomatoes. I like to use just the cherry tomatoes. You could use a Roma tomato, but then you’ll want to make sure you chop it into bite-size pieces. One cup of shredded cheddar cheese and half a cup of chopped green onions. So toss that all together, and that’s the complete salad. Your dinner is ready. Now you can add in some other items if you’d like. It’s not necessary by any means. If you want to add in some meat, you could certainly top it with some crumbled ground beef, maybe seasoned with a little taco seasoning. You could do some grilled chicken, maybe black olives, corn, cilantro, maybe salsa, or sour cream. Whatever kind of taco toppings you like, you could add in here. But that’s it. That’s the full recipe. Really, we don’t do a lot of side dishes with this. We usually just serve it up as is, and everybody eats a heaping bowl full of Frito Taco salad.
As always, I will link this recipe in the show notes for you so that you can click through and go to the recipe. You can pin it, save it, make it, you can even text the recipe to yourself, well, not the recipe, a link to the recipe and all of the ingredients. So if you’re on your phone, right in the middle of the recipe card, there will be a button that says, text me the recipe link and all the ingredients. So that if you have to go to the grocery store, it makes it super user-friendly for you to have the list of ingredients that you need.
One last thing before we end this episode, I would love to have you guys subscribe to my weekly newsletter. It goes out every Thursday and Sunday. On Thursday I send out this podcast episode, and on Sunday it’s the full newsletter that has all of our new recipes, kitchen tips, and tricks, dinner ideas for the week, and everything that we’ve got coming up. So I would love to have you guys subscribe. You can click through the link right in the show notes, or you can go to momsdinner.net/subscribe and just sign up with your email and you’ll start to receive our emails.
Outro: So, until next time, I hope this episode of Let’s Make Dinner, makes your Dinner Time a little easier. See ya.
Double Dip: All right, guys, now it’s time for your double dip. Woo-hoo. Thank you so much for sticking around. Every week if you are enjoying these episodes and they’re helping you get dinner on the table, you can stick around for the double dip and hear what recipe we’re making the next week so that you can have the ingredients be ready and cook along with me.
So, next week, next Thursday, you can join me and we will be making homemade creamed corn. I love creamed corn. I’m from Iowa and we grew up with really great sweet corn in the summer, and I love creamed corn as a side dish. So obviously we’re not making a full dinner. We’re making a side dish. But creamed corn goes along with just about anything summery. So grilled chicken, grilled burgers, hotdogs, even barbecue ribs. If you want to pick up some barbecue ribs from Costco or your local grocery store, or your favorite barbecue, make some creamed corn and have a wonderful dinner.
So, For the cream corn, you don’t need much. Let me tell you what you need to make this wonderful, wonderful side dish. So this actually makes a lot. So you could also half this recipe if you’ve got fewer people that you’re feeding. But you’ll need 12 ears of fresh corn on the cob and remove that corn from the cob. One cup of buttermilk, and four tablespoons of butter. One teaspoon of kosher salt and half a teaspoon of onion powder. That is it. So be ready to make that creamed corn with me next week and plan out what main entrée you want to have with your creamed corn. So until next week, I hope you guys have a wonderful week ahead, and I will see you then.
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I hope you will join me every Thursday for a new dinner idea. Next week we are making a Homemade Creamed Corn that is SO good! If you love summer sweet corn, this is going to be an amazing side dish for you.
Pair it with something from the grill, like burgers or grilled chicken.
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