Building Black Bean Tacos with Our Favorite Healthy Toppings

We Love Tacos in a bunch of different ways, and we’re always looking for yummy options, so today we’re building black bean tacos with our favorite healthy fillings.

I’ve included how to prepare each of our favorite toppings and then build the tacos, here, all together, for your convenience.

Rice

Even though we had rice in the fridge, it wouldn’t be enough, so I made another batch for our tacos + another meal later.

To make the rice:

1. Rinse the rice with water, drain, and then add 2 fresh cups of water to the rice in a pot with a lid (preferably glass lid)
2. Bring to a boil uncovered and then reduce heat to low, cover, and set your timer for 15 minutes
3. Remove from heat and let sit (still lidded) for about 5 minutes):
   • when no water is seen when you tip your lidded pot to about 45, or
   • when your timer goes off
4. Remove lid, fluff, serve.

Sometimes we add flavor to our rice by using broth instead of water, add seasonings (like cilantro, garlic, cumin, bay leaf, etc.) We just decided not to this time, since the leftover rice will be part of other meals or even dessert.

The rice takes the longest time to prepare, so we start this first if we don’t have enough ready in the fridge.

Pico de Gallo

We also made fresh pico de gallo. Still don’t understand why this stuff is named “beak of the rooster”, but we LOVE pico.

It adds such a fresh and cool and heated final touch to many of our meals and can really balance out other heavier ingredients.

To make the pico:

1. Wash, remove the stem scar, and then dice 2 ripe (unrefrigerated) tomatoes and place in a bowl
2. Remove dry skin, dice, and add 1/4 of an onion (we prefer white onions)
3. Wash, trim, chop and add about 10-15 nice stems worth of cilantro leaves and stems (exclude stems if you prefer)
4. Mash and add the previously browned garlic cloves
5. Squeeze in the juice from roughly 1/2 lime
6. Add 1/4-1/2 tablespoon cumin
7. Remove stem and then mince and add 1 serrano pepper (remove seeds and inner white flesh if preferred)
8. Add salt and pepper to taste (if preferred)
9. Fold to mix together gently and serve

Pico is great when you give it a little time to marinate, so when building your bean tacos, you might want to make this right after getting your rice started and getting the onion sauteing in the skillet after browning the garlic.

Onions and Red Peppers

I usually dry/water saute our onions and red peppers nowadays, in order to:

• make clean-up easier
• avoid unnecessary and extremely high calories from added oil

And to add possible taco variations, we sauteed them separately here, starting with the onions and then dropping the peppers into the hot skillet after the onions were done and removed.

So to make the onions and then the red peppers:

1. Begin heating your skillet on medium heat
2. Peel and dry saute 6-8 garlic cloves in the heated skillet
3. Once slightly browned, set the cloves aside for later use in other ingredients
4. Remove the dry, outer skins of the onion and slice in half from the root scar to the top
5. Slice thin, semi-circle onion slices starting from the top back to the root scar of the onion halves, one at a time, and throwing away the root scar
6. Toss the onion slices into the hot skillet, breaking apart the semi-circular ring groups as you go
7. Stir regularly over low-medium heat, adding 1-3 tablespoons of water, and continue until the onions begin to become translucent
8. Move cooked onions to a separate bowl
9. Repeat the same process with the red peppers.

These will each take about 5-10 minutes, so we are usually sauteing them while we’re prepping other parts of our taco ingredients nearby.

We brown each of them more sometimes, and add seasonings (like garlic and cumin) sometimes. We just decided not to today, since we would be getting plenty of flavor and textures once our tacos were assembled.

Beans

We love beans, and today we decided to open up 2 cans of beans for building our black bean tacos.

To make the taco beans:

1. Mash 1/2 of your previously browned garlic cloves in the skillet and add 2 cans of drained and rinsed black beans or about 32 ounces of your Instant Pot Black Beans
2. Add 1 tablespoon of cumin, 1 tablespoon minced, dried onion (optional additions to choose from: salt and pepper, 1/2 teaspoon turmeric, 1/4 teaspoon cayenne, 1 tablespoon dried cilantro, etc)
3. Cook on low heat, stirring periodically, for about 5 minutes or until ingredients are well blended and warm
4. Remove from the hot skillet and serve.

For our tacos today, I mashed the beans slightly so they wouldn’t roll out of the tacos.

Tortillas

You’ve got to finish cooking your tortillas!

I’m not aware of any store-bought tortillas that are completely cooked, so whether you using store-bought tortillas or making you own, you need to cook them about 15-30 seconds on each side before eating. We use cast iron tortilla griddles to cook to our individual preferences of browning. I like mine light and easily moldable, and my hubby likes his much more browned and crisp.

But you can just as easily use any skillet or your oven or microwave.

Building Black Bean Tacos

Once everything is ready, it’s all about the building.

We each have our own unique preferences for taco building, just like our different preferences of tortilla crispiness, but we usually start with something mashed on the bottom to create a sticky base, like our mashed beans or avocados. All throughout preparation, everything has been cut in hopes of enjoying a little of everything in each bite and now we try to arrange everything in a line down the center of each tortilla to make that happen.

Helpful Resources In One Place

I hope you try these tacos, and be sure to let me know if you make any tweaks.

We love Tex-Mex so be sure watch for other healthy meal ideas including:

• Crock Pot Pinto Beans
• Tomatillo Salsa Verde