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These green tacos are color-themed, featuring green lentils, green cabbage, and a bright green cilantro sauce!
Ready for some easy vegan tacos…themed around a color? Yes, these Green Tacos are not only supremely tasty and done in 30 minutes: they’ve got a theme too! Green lentils, green onion, green salsa, and green cilantro sauce: what’s not to love?
These green tacos are bursting with flavor and seriously quick: they take just 30 minutes to make. The taco is incredibly tasty: the combination of fresh flavors and textures is fantastic: the chewy lentils, creamy cilantro sauce, and crunchy green cabbage make for a seriously satisfying taco.
Tips for making green tacos
These tacos are loosely based on an idea from a friend of ours. Instead of taco meat, green lentils spiced with cumin and garlic powder stand in as the base of these green tacos. After we started with green lentils, we realized we could use the theme of green (verde) for all the toppings! Green onion, green cabbage, green drizzle, and green salsa. With that, our “verde” taco recipe was born.
- The component of these green tacos that requires a little thinking ahead is this cilantro sauce, which is based on our cashew cream recipe. It’s a creamy, dairy-free sauce that uses blended cashews as the base.
- Soak the cashews for at least 30 minutes if you have a high-speed blender. If you have a standard blender, we recommend 1 hour or even overnight to soak the cashews. You can also try a quick soak trick of boiling them for 10 minutes before blending.
- Another option is using our cilantro lime dressing or avocado crema instead!
Storing leftovers
The lentil filling for these green tacos lasts up to 5 days refrigerated.
Dietary notes
This green tacos recipe is vegetarian, vegan, plant-based, gluten-free, and dairy-free.
Green Tacos
These green tacos are color-themed, featuring green lentils, green cabbage, and a bright green cilantro sauce!
- Prep Time: 10 minutes
- Cook Time: 20 minutes
- Total Time: 30 minutes
- Yield: 4 (8 tacos) 1x
- Category: Main Dish
- Method: Stovetop
- Cuisine: Mexican Inspired
Ingredients
For the lentils
- 1 ½ cups green lentils
- 2 tablespoons olive oil
- 1 teaspoon cumin
- 1 teaspoon garlic powder
- ¾ teaspoon kosher salt
- Fresh ground pepper
For the tacos
- 8 corn or flour tortillas
- 2 green onions
- 1/2 small green cabbage
- Salsa verde (purchased or homemade)
- 1 recipe Cilantro Sauce, Cilantro Lime Dressing or Avocado Crema, to serve
- Avocado or pickled jalapenos, optional
Instructions
- Soak the cashews for the Creamy Cilantro Sauce for at least 30 minutes while making the remainder of the recipe (for a high speed blender), or soak them overnight or the morning of if you think of it. The longer the better! (You also can make the sauce ahead — see instructions in the cilantro sauce recipe!).
- Place the lentils in a pot with 6 cups warm water. Bring to a low boil, then boil for about 15 to 20 minutes until just al dente (taste often to assess doneness). Drain, then stir in the olive oil, cumin, garlic powder, and kosher salt.
- Thinly slice the green onions. Thinly slice the cabbage. If using, chop the avocado.
- Meanwhile, make the Creamy Cilantro Sauce.
- Warm the tortillas according to the package instructions*. (We typically char ours on an open flame.) To serve, top the tortillas with lentils, green onions, green cabbage, salsa verde, torn cilantro leaves, and cilantro drizzle. Store leftover lentils up to 5 days refrigerated.
Notes
*See How to Warm Tortillas for more!
More vegan dinner recipes
Are you looking for vegan dinner recipes? Outside of these easy green tacos, here are a few of our favorite simple dinner vegan recipes:
Just to confirm…Do I need to double the water for the lentils if I’m doubling the recipe? 6c of water already seems like a lot…
I would! You are boiling the lentils like pasta in this recipe and draining the excess.
Hello, can I use red lentils or split peas to replace the green lentils? It’s what I already have.
Will it change the taste or recipe?
Thanks!
The split peas should work.
Hello!
what do you recommend for a substitute if there is an allergy to Tree Nuts
thank you!
Another vegan sauce option without nuts is this Chipotle Sauce!
This was so delicious!! I couldn’t stop eating it. The seasoning was perfect and I made my own guacamole and it was just as fire!!
So glad you loved it!
I was very skeptical that these would be anything better than okay because they sound so simple. But they were AWESOME! I only made the lentil ‘meat’ with what I had and treated it like a traditional Midwestern taco with cheese and salsa and peppers and it was so good! I can’t wait to try the yummy toppings this summer when they are more in season. But wow, so simple and good!
Ahhh we’re so, so glad to hear that these surpassed expectations! Thank you so much for making them!
These tacos are so healthy with lentils, veggies and nuts, wowwww….. I have a teenage daughter who loves to eat all fancy junk food. I will definitely try your version of tacos for her.
Haha, let us know what she thinks of these!
Delicious! I made this for my family last night for dinner, and it was loved by all. That doesn’t happen very often with three children with very different food preferences. I did make a few adaptations. We don’t like avocados, so we eliminated those. I also added a sautéed red pepper and homemade pico de Gallo. I also wedged a lime and served that with the meal. For some reason, my kids think it is really special to be able to add lime juice or lemon juice to their meal.
That sounds wonderful! Glad you enjoyed it :)
These were so good and easy to make. I almost didn’t try them because I don’t have a high speed blender but my 30 year old Oster did just fine!
Made these – they were just awesome, even to my vegan-skeptical wife (we are not vegan). The cashew creme was delicious. We topped the tacos with homemade curtido (a must! https://www.mexicanplease.com/spicy-curtido-pickled-cabbage-slaw/). The lentils we surprisingly hearty and delicious, even using garlic powder over fresh garlic.
Had these tonight with my homemade salsa verde…so so good!!
Homemade salsa verde would make these out of this world. THANK YOU for making them!
We made this into a bowl and added chayote squash., toasted pumpkin seeds, radishes, and bell pepper! Yum!
Great idea to try it in a bowl as a “naked” taco — love it! We need to try this.
Wow, these tacos sound absolutely amazing! They’re right up my alley with the lentil filling, cilantro drizzle and salsa verde. Would love to have access to these organic tortillas too, but will have to wait until I’m back in the US for that.
Unfortunately yes, I wish we could mail you some organic tortillas! Thank you so much and let us know if you try them out!