Spice Up Your Meal with These 12 Flavorful Veggie Tacos – One Green Planet

October 4^th is National Taco Day and no, it doesn’t fall on a Tuesday! That’s ok because people love eating tacos any day and every day. Last year, Americans ate over 4.5 billion tacos!

Tacos are a traditional Mexican dish where a hard or soft tortilla, made from corn or wheat, is wrapped or folded around a filling that can be anything your heart desires including this Walnut Taco ‘Meat.’ Then they’re garnished with toppings like cheese, salsa, guacamole, and tomatoes.

We all know about hard-shell tacos and soft tacos, but there are other types as well. Flautas are tacos that are rolled into flute shapes and fried until crispy. There are soft-shell tacos, puffy tacos, breakfast tacos, dessert tacos, and taco salads. We can make Mexican tacos, Indian tacos, falafel tacos, Italian tacos, and on and on. There is no limit to the type of tacos we can make! Check out these 10 Awesome Taco Fillings and 5 Ingredients You Can Use to Replace Meat in Tacos. There are so many ways to make tacos; you can have a different one each day for a week – see A Week’s Worth of Delicious Vegan Tacos. You can even make grain-free tortillas or use lettuce instead of a taco shell.

Tacos not only taste amazing, but they are fun to make and eat. To celebrate National Taco Day, have a party that’s all about tacos. Set up a bar with taco shells, different filling ingredients and lots of garnishes to choose from, and let everyone make their own individual taco. Kids will really enjoy getting to decide what goes into their taco and of course, any food you can eat with your fingers is automatically a winner. Need more ideas? Here are 12 mouthwatering veggie tacos to help spice up your day!

1. Smoky Socca Tacos with Peach Salsa

These Smoky Socca Tacos With Peach Salsa combine fresh, spicy flavors with the lightness of a chickpea flour tortilla. The smoky hot filling has pinto beans cooked with cumin and paprika. You’ll love the combination of peaches, tomato and lime in the salsa. Simple to make, delicious and wholesome. Just perfect!

2. Southwest Smoky Rolled Tacos

Tacos really are just the perfect food. Think about it, they’re made up of delicious, versatile and interesting ingredients and come in an edible wrapper. These Southwest Smoky Rolled Tacos, also known as taquitos or flautas, contain protein-rich black beans, a homemade smoky cream and fiber rich nopales (which are cactus paddles. You can’t get any more southwest than that!)

3. Chili Lime Lentil Tacos with Spicy Grilled Pineapple Salsa

There is no end to the number of ways you can make tacos. These Chili Lime Lentil Tacos are awesome on their own and even better with vegan sour cream and avocado. But the spicy grilled pineapple salsa takes these tacos to a whole other level of deliciousness.

4. Balsamic Portobello Cashew Tacos

These Balsamic Portobello Cashew Tacos have marinated Portobello mushrooms sautéed and paired with onions, spinach, tomatoes, and crushed cashews to make a mouthwatering meal. The combination of flavors and textures will blow you away.

5. Green Tacos and Green Taco Salad

These Green Tacos use collard greens as the taco shells, so you get tons of extra minerals like calcium. As an alternative, the fillings also taste delicious on top of salad greens. With spiced lentils and butternut squash puree plus beets, salsa, and avocado, this is a really filling, healthy and delicious meal no matter which way you eat it.

6. Beer Battered Avocado Tacos

Sure, you can have avocado on top of your tacos as a garnish but once you try these Beer Battered Avocado Tacos, you may not have any avocados left for garnish. Totally indulgent, these tacos are a delicious way to change up your usual taco night.

7. Carrot Tacos

These Carrot Tacos come in two versions: non-fried and fried. Not only are they delicious but they are a creative example of cooking root to stem. They’re made up with carrots and the stems of the carrots that are healthy and beneficial. What a great way to get extra veggies in your tacos!

8. Kale, Caramelized Onion, and Quinoa Tacos

These Kale, Caramelized Onion and Quinoa Tacos are super simple, super healthy and will make anyone who’s lucky enough to get one happy. As far as tacos go, they’re fancy-ish enough for things like dinner parties and easy enough that they fit perfectly into a hectic weeknight dinner schedule.

9. Lentil Taco Lettuce Wraps

Lentils are the perfect food: economical, filling, healthy, and so versatile. They also make the best filling for tacos like these Lentil Taco Lettuce Wraps which are a healthier version of the traditional tacos. Top with all your favorites like sour cream, avocado and cashews for crunch.

10. Fuse This: Sweet and Spicy Lentil Dal Tacos

If you can’t decide between Mexican and Indian, why not have both! This recipe for Sweet and Spicy Lentil Dal Tacos fuses two favorite food for one incredible dish. The added molasses gives it an extra interesting twist by providing a deep sweetness that will have you scraping the pot clean.

11. Spicy Bean Chili and Rice Tacos with Guacamole and Cashew Sour Cream

These Spicy Bean Chili and Rice Tacos with Guacamole and Cashew Sour Cream are so easy to make and so much fun, it makes every night feel like a fiesta. Big and small kids alike love building their own tacos at the dinner table and when delicious fillings ooze from broken taco shells, it’s guaranteed grins all round. Crunchy, messy fun.

12. Super Star Lentil Taco Salad

This Super Star Lentil Taco Salad has fresh tortillas topped with tomato seasoned lentils and perfectly grilled chili spiced veggies. It’s topped with sliced avocado or guacamole, some chopped cilantro or parsley and a drizzle of hot sauce for a lovely meal.

What can be better than a meal you can make out of simple ingredients, that’s inexpensive, quick and portable? Tacos are so great, we shouldn’t wait until Tuesday to enjoy them.

Learn How to Cook Plant-Based Meals at Home

Reducing your meat intake and incorporating more plant-based foods into your diet is known to Support various health benefits, including reducing chronic inflammation, improving heart health, enhancing mental well-being, achieving fitness goals, meeting nutritional needs, managing allergies, and promoting gut health, among others. Dairy consumption also has been linked to many health problems, including acne, hormonal imbalance, cancer,  prostate cancer, and has many side effects.

For those of you interested in eating more plant-based, we highly recommend grabbing our favorite plant-based cookbooks and downloading the Food Monster App — with over 20,000 delicious recipes, it is the largest plant-based recipe resource to help reduce your environmental footprint, save animals, and get healthy! And, while you are at it, we encourage you to also learn about the environmental and health benefits of a plant-based diet.

Here are some great resources to get you started:

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