Black Bean Tacos with Lime-Cilantro Rice and Salsas

We were feeling a bit spicy recently and our minds turned to Mexican. In addition, we've wanted to try to work on making our own salsas for inclusion in Mexican dishes or simply as a dip. So we thought about making our own tacos: Black Bean Tacos with Lime-Cilantro Rice and Salsas.

So to begin, we made two types of salsas, the first of which was a corn salsa. It included corn, red peppers, cilantro, jalapeno, garlic, onion and lime juice.


The other salsa we wanted was a more traditional one: pico de gallo. For this one, we had tomatoes as well (although they were chopped up much more roughly as you can see), green peppers, onions, jalapenos and lime juice.


The reason this recipe was thought of in the first place was because we tried something we never did before: We bought dried black beans and hydrate them on our own. Before this, we had always purchased canned black beans, which are probably our favorite non-meat protein. Since we've tried this recipe, we have gone fully toward purchasing dried black beans.

But the beans need to be cooked. And we included some spices in with them, including chili powder, cumin, onions, garlic, cilantro, paprika and salt and pepper.


The last element of the tacos is the rice. Very simply we cooked it and included some frozen, chopped-up cilantro and squeezed some juice out of some limes.


Building the taco is the most important part, and we differed in our approached. Mine (not pictured) was to begin with hard-shell tacos, put sour cream on the bottom, then add the black beans, rice and salsas. Another approach is to put the sour cream on top. Top with cheese and a bit of lettuce and you're ready to go.