Wednesday, April 16, 2008

Is this really taco salad?

The kids were gone, and I had a little leftover browned ground chuck that I needed to do something with. When DH emailed and requested his Mom's "taco salad", I figured, "Why not?" The kids will barely eat it and it meant that I would not have a kitchen to clean tonight.

The recipe is simple - mix browned ground beef, kidney beans, and enough Catalina dressing to make it saucy. To assemble the salad, mix lettuce, shredded cheddar and Fritos corn chips. Add a few spoons of the beef mixture, mix, and top with sour cream. I will say this - it is really good - especially if you let it sit a little before you eat it.
I was looking around today and saw the Taco Salad post at What's Cooking, and I wondered how what I threw together tonight was ever considered taco salad? Fritos, the beef and cheddar, the lettuce - what? I make a "real" taco salad - lots of veggies, grilled meat, avacodos, etc. tortilla strips - something the rest of the world would recognize.
I began to look around to see where this recipe came from - especially after the whole Cindy McCain story about stealing recipes from food network. I find the recipe on all kind of sites - recipe sites, a cajun site, and a military family site. Maybe that is where it came from. His dad was an officer. Maybe it came from an old officer's wives cookbook. I still can't find the original recipe. Does anybody out there know?
By the way - the salad is great every once in a while - just not taco salad!

2 comments:

Ivy said...

Your salad looks great but I can't help about the origin of this salad. We read a lot of recipes every day so we take something we like from one recipe and something from the other etc and then make something new. So long as it is not a copy paste recipe then I think there shouldn't be any problem.

Anonymous said...

I tried this today and my family loved it - thanks!!!