Tempeh taco salad

November 13, 2017

This is a rare, valued thing - a new recipe to bring into our weeknight dinner rotation! It's a tempeh taco salad, published earlier this year on one of my favourite long-running food blogs, 101 Cookbooks. 

It starts with tempeh and black beans in taco spices, then there's lots of lettuce and fresh coriander to assert that it's a salad, and a handful of corn chips to bring the taco shell crunch. The salad dressing starts with ketchup, not something I thought I'd see on such a wholefoods-focused blog, but it's filled out with lots of tangy apple cider vinegar. Swanson encourages adding your own extras, too - for me that meant avocado chunks, fresh cherry tomatoes and a wedge of lime.

I'd recommend heading over to the source and checking out the different photos there - Swanson's version is richly coloured with roasted tomatoes and her corn chips are sparse and stirred through the salad. I was eating this over several days, so I separated out the chips to keep their crispness, and added in the avocado at the last minute. Avocado management aside, this was as good a packed lunch as it was a worknight dinner. It'll be back in our kitchen several more times before this summer is done.

Tempeh taco salad
(slightly adapted from 101 Cookbooks)

225g packet tempeh
2 teaspoons olive oil
1 tablespoon taco seasoning
1/3 cup ketchup
1/2 cup apple cider vinegar
2 tablespoons golden syrup
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 teaspoons smoked paprika
1 teaspoon onion powder
1/3 cup sunflower oil
400g can black beans
2 medium heads of cos lettuce
1 cup coriander
1 avocado
250g punnet cherry tomatoes
2 cups plain corn chips
1 lime

Slice the tempeh into cubes. Pour the olive oil into a frypan and set it over medium-high heat. Saute the tempeh in the oil until browned, then turn off the heat and transfer the tempeh to a bowl. Stir the taco seasoning through the tempeh.

Make the dressing in a lidded glass jar. Pour in the ketchup, vinegar, golden syrup, salt, paprika, onion power and sunflower. Screw on the lid and shake until the dressing is emulsified.

Drain and rinse the black beans, and stir them into the cooled spiced tempeh; stir in a tablespoon or so of the dressing too.

Roughly chop the lettuce and coriander; slice the avocado and cherry tomatoes. Gently toss together the salad or layer it up on a platter: lettuce, tomato, tempeh/beans, avocado, corn chips, coriander, then the dressing. Slice the lime into wedges and serve it on the side.