These spaghetti squash tacos with black beans are a simple, tasty, and filling vegetarian main dish option! They’re sure to be a crowd-pleaser.
My first experience with spaghetti squash was many, many years ago. I had been watching a short-lived series on Food Network called The Calorie Commando, where chef Juan Carlos Cruz, whom I had watched on a weight-loss competition show on TLC or Discovery-long before the days of The Biggest Loser-would make over your favorite recipes to make them “light”. (As a side note, Cruz was sentenced in 2010 to prison time for putting out a hit on his wife….so you won’t find any evidence of him on the Food Network website. It has been wiped clean of all traces of this man.).
So anyway, ol’ Juan Carlos has a viewer who wrote in about their addiction to pasta. So what did he do? Well, he made spaghetti squash and meatballs (turkey meatballs, probably). I remember being intrigued, so I bought a spaghetti squash and tried it, leaving out the meatballs. Naturally, Philip and I were starving half an hour after eating our bowl of squash “noodles” topped with marinara and cheese. And this, my friends, is when I decided that I was not into the whole “Oh, eat this [completely different food item] and just pretend it’s something else” deal. Delicious as it may be, spaghetti squash is not spaghetti.
Still, spaghetti squash is good, so as long as I’m not closing my eyes and attempting to fool my brain into thinking that I’m twirling up long strands of al dente pasta, I’m perfectly happy to eat it. When I saw the recipe for spaghetti squash tacos with black beans in The Smitten Kitchen Cookbook (<–affiliate link), I knew that I would be making those soon….and I did. And they were fantastic. You see, anything goes when it comes to tacos, and you don’t have to try to pretend that spaghetti squash is “like” anything else. It’s just its own person, stuffed in a tortilla with some other good stuff and making you want more spaghetti squash tacos.
This recipe is about as simple as recipes get. Bake the squash, rinse the beans, chop some stuff, heat some tortillas. I even took a shower while the spaghetti squash was in the oven. Indeed, the most difficult part of the process was cutting through that blasted rock-hard squash (who wants to buy me a vegetable cleaver?). Double tortillas are helpful in these spaghetti squash tacos because the sauced squash is a little wetter than your average taco filling, but if you don’t want to go that route just be sure everyone has a fork and you’ll be fine.
Spaghetti squash tacos with black beans are light yet filling and so delicious.
Tacos on Chattavore: As much as I make tacos at home, you’d think I’d have more recipes…but I don’t. I’ll have to work on that. There are these chicken teriyaki tacos with egg roll wrappers, and these fish tacos.
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Mary
Yield: 10 tacos
This recipe is adapted (barely) from The Smitten Kitchen Cookbook .
20 minPrep Time:
45 minCook Time:
1 hr, 5 Total Time:
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Ingredients
- 1 Large spaghetti squash, about 3 pounds (halved and seeded)
- 2 tablespoons lime juice (from about 1 lime)
- 1 teaspoon chili powder
- 1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
- 1/2 teaspoon coarse salt
- 10-20 corn tortillas
- 1 1/2 cup very well rinsed and drained black beans (I cooked my own, or you can use one 15-ounce can)
- 4oz crumbled feta or queso fresco
- 1/4 cup diced white or red onion (I left this out because raw onions make me cry)
- 1/4 cup chopped cilantro
- lime wedges (optional, for serving)
- hot sauce-I used sriracha (optional, for serving)
- sour cream (optional, for serving)
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Oil a sheet pan and place the spaghetti squash halves face-down in the oil. Bake for about 40 minutes.
- Allow the squash halves to cool until you can handle them (I actually don't let them cool completely, just until I can hold them with a kitchen towel without the heat seeping through the towel). Use a fork to scrape the strands of squash out of the skins and place in a large bowl.
- Toss the spaghetti squash with the lime juice, chili powder, cumin, and salt until thoroughly coated.
- Warm the tortillas (I do this over my open gas flame but you could heat them for about ten minutes wrapped in foil in your 375 oven). Divide the spaghetti squash among the tortillas and top each with two tablespoons of black beans, some crumbled cheese, chopped cilantro, and onion. Serve with lime wedges and hot sauce if desired.
Notes
As I mentioned in the post, we like to double up on our tortillas. If you also like to do this, go with 20 tortillas. If you'd rather make each taco with just one tortilla, you'll only need 10. Also, have I told you guys my sour cream trick? If you put sour cream in a sandwich bag, you can snip off the corner and "pipe" it onto your tacos like icing!
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