EASY 30-Minute TACOS Recipe for STABLE Blood Sugar Levels: Metabolically Friendly | Levels Kitchen

Welcome! We are making metabolically-friendly, low-spike tacos today, and I actually cannot describe to you how flavorful these tacos are. This is an extra special meal because it is a 30-minute meal for $30, and it's gonna feed four people, and it's really, really easy. We're actually making two variations today. We're gonna make a beef version with some beautiful grass-fed ground beef, and we're also gonna make a vegetarian version that is made with walnuts and mushrooms. So we're gonna get tons of nutrients. We're gonna be using butter lettuce shells for those who want a little extra greens, but if not, you've got some great almond flour tortillas, much less of a spike for you than a refined grain tortilla made with corn or white flour. And then we're gonna be making the most delicious creamy taco sauce. If you drizzle it on the tacos, it looks gorgeous and becomes a work of art. So let's get started. We're gonna start by just chopping some red onions, which again are just gonna be for a little extra color. Nutrients is the name of the game for metabolic health, so the more color we can get, the better. So chop them thin, and then just chop them in half. So onions are a part of the allium family of vegetables, and one of the fun characteristics about allium vegetables is that they are sulfur-rich, and sulfur's important for DNA repair, DNA synthesis, protein synthesis, and gene expression. Always good to get a few alliums in per day, and that's gonna be things like scallions, onions, leeks, chives, and garlic. Next we're gonna chop up some avocados. Again, these are gonna get sprinkled on top of our tacos lengthwise down the middle, making some nice slices. Grab a spoon and scoop that all out. Avocados also interestingly have a bunch of fiber, which I don't think most people realize. Four or five grams of fiber for just a quarter of it, which is pretty cool. Let's cut up a lime, which we're gonna have some lime wedges on the side of these tacos. The next thing we're gonna do is the vegetarian walnut mushroom taco meat. So what I'm gonna do is pull out my food processor, which is gonna do all the work for us. So we're gonna start with two cups of mushrooms. I got some organic Baby Bella mushrooms, but you could really use anything. You could use white button mushrooms, you could use cremini, whatever looks delicious, and you know, if it's on sale, even better. So that's about two cups, and then two cups of walnuts. We love mushrooms because they are such a metabolically friendly food. They are low in calories and low in carbohydrates, and if they are mushrooms that have been grown under UV light, so outdoors, they are gonna be a great source of vitamin D. So mushrooms are awesome. And then we're gonna do our spices. Two tablespoons of tamari, and this is a gluten-free soy sauce alternative that gives a fabulous umami, salty flavor. Two tablespoons of cumin, one teaspoon of garlic powder, and one half teaspoon of chipotle powder. Perfect. So once that's all in the food processor, we're just gonna pulse it about five or six times and turn this into a fabulous crumble. Let's give this a little bite. This is raw, it's gonna get heated up, but oh my god. It is so flavorful. I don't know how that few ingredients make something taste this good, but it is seriously amazing. And I have to say something here. Some people give vegetarian taco meats a bad rap because it's trying to be something that it's not. It's trying to be ground beef. But I think this needs a total reframe. We think through that framework of food is just molecular information, it really just comes down to like, what's this beautiful stuff we're putting in our bodies? So don't get on that bandwagon about, oh, I'm not gonna eat fake meat because this is not fake meat. This is gorgeous molecular information that tastes delicious that's gonna make a delicious taco. So now that I'm off that bandwagon, let's make our delicious cashew salsa sauce for the top of the tacos. Take your blender, put in an entire jar of whatever salsa you like. Mild, medium, hot, jarred, or fresh. I like to use organic. Pour that whole thing in, and since it's a one-to-one ratio, I just take whatever jar, fill that up with cashews, perfect, same amount, boom. That is pretty darn full. We're gonna have to switch this over to a bigger blender container. So just put that on there, screw on tight, whatever type of blender you're using is fine, and then we're gonna blend this. This is looking awesome. Let's give it a taste. Delicious. It's creamy, it's tangy, it's tomatoey, it's spicy, it's amazing. It's gonna be so good on top of our tacos, and if it's a little thicker than you want, you can always add a couple tablespoons of water and thin it out. It'll taste amazing. I like to have it in sort of a sour cream-like consistency so you can drizzle it on top of the tortillas. So now we're gonna actually cook our beef and our walnut mushroom taco meat. So we've got our pound of grass-fed beef over here, and we're literally just gonna throw this in the pan. The pan's been heating up, there's no oil in it, it's over medium heat. Just break that up. So we've got six spices that are gonna go in this dish, and I'll read them out to you. We've got one tablespoon chili powder, one-half teaspoon salt, three-fourth teaspoons cumin, one-half teaspoon dried oregano, one-fourth teaspoon garlic, and one-fourth teaspoon onion powder. And those are gonna go in after the beef has pretty much fully cooked, and then right before we put that tomato powder on. This meat is looking pretty much done, so we're actually gonna drain off the excess oil. I'm gonna wipe out that pan, because no one wants greasy beef, and we're gonna return it right back. So now we'll put our spice mixture on here for lots of antioxidants. Oh, it smells good. And we're gonna stir that around a little bit, and then add a half cup of organic tomato sauce, and turn that heat to low at this point. Our beef is now totally done, so I'm gonna take it off the heat, put it on a plate, wipe down this pan, and we will make our vegetarian mushroom walnut filling. Really any oil here. You could use ghee, avocado oil, coconut oil, olive oil. This will do just fine. The heat is on low-medium. Good sizzle. Just stir it around, heat it up, get it a little bit browned, three minutes or so. Our veggie taco filling is smelling amazing, and I think it's done. So we're gonna transfer to a plate, and then heat up some tortillas, and we're ready to plate these. I'm gonna spray a little bit of olive oil, and then take our almond flour tortillas and throw those on there just for 30 seconds to a minute, get them nice and warm. These store-bought almond flour tortillas are delicious, and generally spike people a lot less than a regular corn or flour tortilla, but they still have a few carbs. These I think have 11 grams of carbs for two tortillas. If you want a truly no-carb tortilla, you can actually make them out of ground flax seeds and water, and so we will link a flax seed tortilla recipe. You do need a tortilla press for it, but they're actually really, really simple. It's just flax seeds, water, and some spices, tortilla press, throw them on the grill, and you get a no-carb delicious tortilla. So let's assemble. We're gonna basically make different variations. We've got butter lettuce for a taco shell, we've got almond flour tortillas, we've got our veggie filling, and we've got our meat. So let's do some taco art here. For those of you who want to use butter lettuce as your taco shell, you're basically just gonna buy a beautiful head of butter lettuce, and you're looking for a head of lettuce that has really pretty large leaves that are gonna be able to really hold some filling. This one was grown hydroponically, so we've got a little dirt on the bottom, which honestly, I'm a sucker for something that's got, that looks like it's straight from the ground, but you can just cut that off, and then take a look and just try and find the best leaves. These center ones are not gonna work very well, so you can save those for a salad. This would be a great small taco shell. When I'm having a dinner party, I'll often serve almond flour tortillas and butter lettuce shells as an option, and I find that people usually take one of each, and then they always end up loving the butter lettuce just as much as the almond flour tortilla. I'm gonna start with a little bit of our beautiful taco filling. Then we'll add a little bit of avocado, some of our cabbage slaw, a little more pink with some red onions, and then our cashew sauce. So we could do a little squeeze of lime here, and then because fermented foods we know are so good for the microbiome, if you happen to have any fermented food on hand, you can also top this with a little bit of sauerkraut. It is so gorgeous, and who doesn't love a little more tang? So now let's make an almond flour beef taco. Gosh, I wish you guys could be in here to smell this, but hopefully you're making it at home soon too. A little bit of cabbage, some avocado, perfectly ripe. Drizzle that on there, some red onions, squeeze of lime. For this one, I think I'm gonna do some beet sauerkraut for some pink because I just love some color contrast in my meals, and let's make one more. Gonna put a little bit of beef filling, some cabbage, some avocado, and don't forget, these can be whatever you want them to be. If you wanted to do a little bit of grilled chicken, a little bit of shrimp sauteed with olive oil and taco seasoning, it doesn't really matter. It's whatever your preference is, and this is just to get you started to think about what a low-glycemic, low-carb, nutrient-dense taco can be like. But go crazy and have fun. A little squeeze of lime, and then our delicious sauce. Since I do have three fermented foods out, let's just do the third one. This is the jalapeno pickle relish because I love helping my microbiome out a little bit, but this is 100% optional. A little more sauce, and I think we're done, so now let's try it out. It's so good. What I love about this is how spicy and incredible that beef is, paired with that tangy creaminess of that cashew sauce. I hope you love this meal as much as I do, and remember, this is a 30-minute meal for $30 or less, low-carb taco with tons of nutrients to support your microbiome, to support your metabolic health, to support your mitochondria. I hope you love it, and if you make some of these tacos, tag us, show us how you did it. I can't wait to see. And enjoy your delicious tacos.