grilled salmon and black bean taco salad

This is a sponsored post for Mission gluten-free flour tortillas. We eagerly said yes to this sponsorship, for which we have been paid. The opinions and words are entirely our own. 

Here in the United States, we just celebrated a three-day weekend, the first sign of summer, a weekend that includes parties and barbecues on a Monday. Our plans included a Saturday dinner with friends, the birthday party for a little friend turning 4, beach picnics, and baseball games. And we fired up the grill for feasts all weekend.

In preparation for that weekend, Danny and I started playing, early. He grilled salmon outside, under cloudy skies. We tossed together greens with a vinaigrette he made with cilantro and lime. We spooned together creamy black beans and thin slices of Fresno chiles. And then he fried up gluten-free flour tortillas to make a taco bowl to hold our lunch.

Oh, and then we took photographs with our mouths watering.

Wait a second. Back up. Gluten-free flour tortillas? Not the kind of gluten-free flour tortillas I first made a few years ago and still enjoy, the thick New Mexico flour tortillas that are more like hearty flatbread? Do I mean the thin, flappy flour tortillas that allows us to make burritos and enchiladas and satisfying quesadillas and soft flour tacos and fried taco bowls like a champ?

Yes I do. I mean these Mission gluten-free flour tortillas.

We partnered with Mission to help promote these gluten-free flour tortillas because we already love Mission’s corn tortillas. Other than occasionally making our own tortillas, we reach for the Mission corn tortillas in our pantry on Tuesday taco nights and most breakfasts. Whatever we put on the table — roasted asparagus, red lentils, goat cheese, or cucumber salad — our daughter will eat it if she can wrap it up in a tortilla and call it a taco.

When these new gluten-free flour tortillas arrived at our home — Mission sent them to us to test, to see if we wanted to do a sponsorship — we made tacos for dinner. Lucy lost her mind for them. The day these tortillas arrived, I saw her sneak food for the first time in her life. She kept going back to the package to tear away pieces to eat. And she wanted tacos every morning last week.

I know why. These are soft tortillas. Floppy. Ready to be curled around good food. We could have made any traditional Mexican dish with these. No one could complain that they are gluten-free. They are simply good tortillas.

These are Lucy approved.

Since these arrived, we remembered again how a good tortilla can determine a meal. Once Danny decided to make taco bowls, we had our recipe.

He fired up the grill, hot, and lay 3-ounce pieces of wild Alaskan sockeye salmon on the grill. A few moments of cooking, then a half turn, then another few moments, and we had rare grilled salmon for our lunch.

Even though the meal was centered on the taco bowl, we still wanted lots of greens. Danny tossed the greens in a zingy dressing he made with cilantro and vigorous squeezes of lime juice.

Those little piles of green onions, Fresno chiles, matchstick slices of jicama, orange segments, and seasoned black beans were going in too.

Have you ever eaten one of those flour tortilla bowls, crunchy and shattery, a place to hold a great grilled salad that becomes part of the meal as well? I’ve eaten them in restaurants but I never thought of making them at home. Luckily, Danny had made them in restaurants many times before. With ease, he filled a pot 1/3 full of vegetable oil, put in the thermometer, and waited until the oil reached 350°. He grabbed a tortilla and let it float down to the surface of the hot oil. Then he put a small ladle in the center of the tortilla and held it there while the tortilla danced in the bubbling hot oil. A few moments later, he pulled the crisp tortilla bowl out of the oil and fried another one.

Time for lunch.

This grilled salmon and black bean taco salad could be yours this weekend, in time for Memorial Day. (Well, if you live on the west coat, where these Mission gluten-free flour tortillas are available right now. They’re coming soon to the rest of the country.) Or, you could make carne asada tacos. Or shrimp quesadillas with green chiles and queso fresco. Or roasted pablano enchiladas.

Really, the possibilities are endless. Our kids are interested in exploring all the options with these Mission gluten-free tortillas.

So are we.

The post grilled salmon and black bean taco salad appeared first on Gluten Free Girl.

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