Friday, September 18, 2015

Taco Salad


I decided to make taco salad. It’s a recipe that my family uses a lot when we need a quick easy meal. We especially make it for when we’re going boating and need a meal that can be prepared ahead of time and just thrown together.

Here is a list of the ingredients you need to make this meal.

1 lb of hamburger

1 package taco seasoning

1/3 of an onion diced

1 can kidney beans

1 can of olives

¼ cup shredded cheese

1 head of lettuce

½ cup of ranch dressing

2 tomatoes diced

½ cup Doritos crushed (optional)



Taste: Taco salad has so many great flavors in it! The taco seasoning adds a little spice to the hamburger. The Doritos give it a hot cheesy taste but when you add the ranch dressing it cools it down to give it a great medium flavor. The texture is also amazing. For those of you who like salad this is a great change up from your normal vegetable or casear salads. However, for those of you who aren’t huge salad fans (like me) it’s a great way to still get the salad feel to your meal but have lots of extra creamy toppings.

Preparation: This is a very easy meal to make. The longest part is having to cook the hamburger. You will also have to wash the lettuce and chop up the onion. The rest of it you will have to open cans or dump cheese, chips, and dressing into the bowl and mix it all together.

Nutritional Value:

Calories 279

Total Fat 15g

Cholesterol 44mg

Sodium 762mg

Potassium 416mg

Total Carbohydrates 24g

Protein 13g

Importance: The variety of food groups within the meal gives you a balanced and healthy dish. It is a balanced meal because it is low in calories but high in proteins. Proteins give you energy and help you build muscle. It is one of the few elements that help makeup are DNA.

Negatives: Some things about this recipe that aren’t so healthy is the chips and the ranch dressing, These ingredients add calories and fats that aren’t the healthiest and probably shouldn’t be consumed too often. However they add great taste and aren’t too bad to eat every once in awhile.

Missing nutrients: There are no fruits in this recipe and there should really be more grains to balance this meal out. To make up for that you could serve some watermelon or your choice of fruit. I personally also add parmesan breadsticks or rolls of any kind to eat with this meal (its especially good to dip your breadsticks in the left-over dressing on your plate).

Nordhoff, W

2 comments:

  1. I like this recipe based on my diet analysis paper for several reasons. One it is quick and easy to make which will allow me to make a good healthy meal fast and easy the only thing you need to cook is the meet which will only take ten minutes. Will work great for when I don’t have a lot of time to eat or prepare food. This meal also gives protein and fiber which where to things that I needed to up for my diet, and adds vegetables I left out the chips and ranch to cut down on carbohydrates. The salad is good without ranch. It tasted good even without the ranch the taco seasoning gives enough flavor that you can do without the ranch which is one of the down falls for the salad.

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  2. I chose this recipe because of the beans. In my diet analysis I noticed that the majority of my proteins came from red meats. This allowed met to add healthy plant proteins. I also liked that it was easily customization. I ended up using turkey which was a benefit to the health properties. This recipe was delicious! I would definitely make it again. The time to cook was very short. maybe 20 minutes from start to finish. The taco seasoning gave it a great flavor! I did add 2 mashed up chips and that was a nice touch.I added a lot of lettuce and only a little meat with lots of beans and this was a very nice balance.

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