Taco Rice Salad

We love taco salad in this house...if it were up to Andy, we'd eat it at least once a week. Alas, by the time we add the chips, sour cream and cheese, it's outrageously calorific, so I was excited when my Cooking Light cookbook had a great recipe for Taco Rice Salad. I tried it tonight and man, oh man...was it delicious!!!! The recipe calls for ground beef, but I used chicken instead. I put 2 boneless breasts and a boneless thigh in the crockpot with 1/2 packet of taco seasoning and 1/4 cup chicken stock. I set it on low and left for the day. When I came home, I shredded it up and voila...beautiful chicken taco meat. So, here's how this salad works.

Taco Rice Salad
Ingredients:
SALAD:
Cooking spray
1 lb ground round or 1 lb shredded chicken
1 garlic clove, minced
3 cups cooked yellow rice
1 tsp cumin
1 tsp chili powder
Salt and pepper (I didn't need either in this dish due to the taco seasoning I used)
6 cups torn lettuce
3 cups chopped tomato
1 cup frozen corn, thawed
1/2 cup chopped red onion (I used a shallot)
1 can black beans, rinsed and drained

DRESSING:
2/3 cup light sour cream
2/3 cup salsa
1 tsp. chili powder
1/2 tsp. cumin

REMAINING INGREDIENT:
1/2 cup shredded Jack cheese

**The rice is pre-cooked here, so make your rice (I just used Zatarain's Yellow Rice Mix) before you start the rest of the process.

1. To prepare salad, heat a large nonstick skillet over medium-high hear. Coat pan with cooking pray. Add beef and garlic and cook until browned. (With my chicken, since it was already cooked, I just warmed it back up and added the garlic.) Stir in the rice (it is already cooked) and cumin, chili powder, salt and pepper. Cool slightly.

2. Combine lettuce and next 4 ingredients in a large bowl; toss to combine.

3. To prepare dressing, combine sour cream, salsa, 1 tsp chili powder and 1/2 tsp cumin, stirring with a whisk. Rather than dress the entire salad at once (I knew we'd have leftovers), I just kept the dressing separate and dressed each plate individually. That way I could wrap up any leftovers.

4. Put it all together: Put 1 1/3 cups salad mixture on a plate or bowl. Spoon dressing over the top; toss to coat. Top with 3/4 cup of the rice and meat mixture and 1.5 tbs of cheese. Mix altogether. The best part about this is that one serving is just under 400 calories! Wahoo!

I wrapped up the leftover meat and rice mixture. This can be used for more salad tomorrow, or can be made into quesadillas, burritos or tacos. The leftover salad, cheese and dressing were wrapped up separately and will be ready for a good lunch tomorrow.