Salmon Tacos, Fast and Easy Enough for a Weeknight

The fastest and easiest way to get that surfside vibe is Salmon Tacos, and this is the recipe to do it. Shall we?

Jump to:

• Best Kind of Fish for Tacos?
• Are Salmon Tacos Healthy?
• What Ingredients You Need for Salmon Tacos
• What's the Best Salmon for Tacos?
• How to Make Salmon Tacos
• Best Way to Assemble Salmon Tacos
• Pro Tips, Tricks, and Technique FAQs
• Salmon Tacos Recipe

Best Kind of Fish for Tacos?

You can fold anything into a tortilla and call it a taco. So Salmon Tacos are charred corn tortillas filled with spice-rubbed salmon, a crisp cabbage slaw, luxurious avocado, sweet mango, and drizzled with an awesome garlicky, lime-y yogurt sauce.

Are Salmon Tacos Healthy?

Yes, yes, absolutely yes Salmon Tacos are nutrient dense and for most lifestyles, health needs and dietary considerations, are very healthy! To be honest, I can't really think of a case in which Salmon Tacos would not be healthy, barring the usual allergies, sensitivities, etc. Let's get into the individual compenents' health offerings:

Salmon. When we talk about the health benefits of salmon, we are almost always talking about the health benefits of omega-3 fatty acids, the all-star anti-inflammatory compound associated with supporting gut health and reducing the risk of heart disease, diabetes, and other inflammation-induced diseases. Salmon is one of the highest concentration, highest quality sources of omega-3 fatty acids, containing 2,150 mg per 3-ounce serving.

TONS of Nutrients in Salmon. Salmon is also one of the most nutrient-dense foods in the world. In addition to the high levels of above-mentioned omega-3s, salmon is an excellent source of vitamin B12 for cellular energy, vitamin D which our bodies cannot make on our own, and the essential mineral selenium that has antioxidant properties that protect the heart, reduce cognitive decline, and boost immunity. (source: NIH)

Depending on the type—King, sockeye, coho, Atlantic—salmon has 20-22 grams of protein per 100-gram/3.5-ounce serving.

Cabbage Slaw.

Avocado.

Yogurt Has Probiotic-like Qualities. Traditional fish and other types of tacos have sour cream or a sour cream like "crema" accompanying. I swap in yogurt which has the same tang as sour cream or crema, but generally lower in fat and higher in protein. As a fermented food, yogurt provides gut-health promoting probiotic bacteria.

Mango.

Health and Dietary Considerations of Salmon Tacos

As published, this recipe for Salmon Tacos is:

• pescatarian
• gluten-free
• wheat-free
• refined sugar-free

With some substitutions, you can make Salmon Tacos completely grain-free and/or dairy-free!

What Ingredients You Need for Salmon Tacos

Fresh/refrigerator ingredients:

• 1 pound salmon
• 3 cups shredded red or green cabbage
• 1 green onion
• 2 tablespoons chopped cilantro
• 3 limes
• 1 cup yogurt
• 1 clove garlic
• 2 avocados
• 1 mango
• 1 cup red onions, fresh or pickled
• 1 jalapeño, seeded and sliced

Dry/pantry ingredients:

• 2 tablespoon avocado oil
• 1 teaspoon ground cumin
• 2 teaspoons chili powder
• 1 teaspoon garlic powder
• sea salt and black pepper
• corn tortillas, enough for 3-4 tacos per person

Optional taco toppings, pick and choose:

• cilantro
• hot sauce
• salsa or pico de gallo

What's the Best Salmon for Tacos?

tl;dr. For tacos (and other recipes!), I've been loving wild sockeye salmon. (smaller, darker red-orange piece on right side of photo)

Lately I have been getting into wild sockeye salmon, which has a darker red-orange color than the other types of salmon, and is leaner than King salmon. For tacos especially, which has a high number of other high-flavor ingredients going on, the individual taste of salmon doesn't come across as boldly as if you were serving a large piece of grilled salmon by itself on a plate.

You can use just about any kind of salmon for tacos, from sustainably farmed Atlantic Salmon, Coho or Sockeye.

USUALLY, my recommendation for any cooked preparation of salmon is always for fresh, wild-caught King salmon, which is the largest of the different types of salmon, and has the richest, most luxurious taste and texture. From a nutrition standpoint, King salmon has the highest amount of health-supporting omega3s per serving of all the different salmon types.

However, wild King salmon has a fairly short season, May-June and it's the most expensive of all the salmon types.

Check out this What is the Best Type of Salmon - Coho, King, Sockeye post for a deep dive (pardon the pun heh heh) into salmon!

Additional Ingredients Notes and Resources

Yogurt. I keep a large container of this organic, grass-fed yogurt in my fridge most of the time. It is made from A2 dairy, which is regular cows milk dairy, but the A2 protein is easier to digest for some people rather than A1 or combination A1/A2 protein in milk. (tip-off: Costco in my area often carries the brand and is a pretty good value if you go through a lot of yogurt in your kitchen.) This brand also has A2 yogurt

Avocado oil. I use this avocado oil for cooking.

Cumin

Chili powder

Tortillas

Garlic, onions, green onions, and any other fresh herbs and produce from either the Santa Monica Farmers' Market on Wednesday, Mar Vista Farmers Market on Sunday, or Whole Foods Market when I can't find what I need at the farmers' market.

How to Make Salmon Tacos

Cook Salmon

Because the salmon will flake apart to put into tacos, don't worry too much about keeping the salmon together all in one piece. If you are baking or grilling, cook the whole side of salmon. If you are pan-searing or air-frying, cut the salmon into smaller filets.

Prep Cabbage Slaw for Tacos

Best Way to Assemble Salmon Tacos

Pro Tips, Tricks, and Technique FAQs

• Heat tortillas on the stovetop. If you have a gas stove, turn one burner on low, and using tongs, carefully char each tortilla over the flame. You can also heat a cast iron skillet DRY on the stovetop over medium heat and toast the tortillas in the dry pan.
• Serve as Salmon Taco Bowls. A pint-sized mason jar (16 ounces) is the exact size for this recipe. Get the wide mouth version because they are easier to fill AND to wash.
• Batch up the Seasoning Mix! The seasoning mix with chili powder, garlic powder, ground cumin and salt can be used as an all-purpose seasoning mix for a lot of uses. Make double, triple, or even quadruple and save it in your spice drawer!
• Meal Prep Template. Prep and cook all these components in "bulk"—spice rubbed salmon, cabbage slaw, sliced mango, pickled onions, Yogurt Sauce—on a Sunday or Monday and store in their individual containers in the fridge as meal prep for the first few days of the week. Finish the salmon within the first three days, and beyond that, you can fill in with a different protein.

Tools and Equipment

As I say for just about any recipe, there isn't any special tool or piece of equipment required to make Salmon Tacos. You can make it using a sharp chef's knife on a sturdy cutting board to cut the radish! However, that isn't to say there are a few tools that might make it slightly easier to get Salmon Tacos from the fish and farmers markets to your fork!

• Chef's knife, my personal workhorse
• Mandoline
• Japanese-style mandoline
• Wooden cutting board, oversized for all those radish cubes
• Glass mixing bowls 
• Mini ¼-cup liquid measuring cup
• Parchment paper to make clean-up easier
• Quarter size sheet pans
• Cedar planks for grilling
• Cast iron skillet for stove-top cooking
• Citrus squeezer
• Garlic press

How to Store Advance Prep or Leftover Salmon Tacos

Refrigerator. You can keep prepped or leftover components of Salmon Tacos seaparately in their own, air-tight containers in the refrigerator. Cooked salmon in a tightly sealed container in the refrigerator for 3 days as long as you use clean utensils every time you remove some of the radish from the jar.

Freezer. Cooked salmon and tortillas can be kept in the freezer up to 1 month. Cabbage slaw and other fresh ingredients will not freeze well.

Ingredients Substitutions and FAQs

The recipe for Salmon Tacos is very forgiving in terms of ingredient amounts, measurement precision, and technique. Here are recommended substitutions and some pro-tips:

• Different fish from salmon? Yes, you can cook a different kind of fish other than salmon for tacos! Because fish gets flaked or cut into smaller pieces after cooking, and the other ingredients are very flavorful, you don't have to worry about the "right texture," or a specific flavor. Fish that always work well for tacos: cod, halibut, mahi mahi (dorado).
• Corn vs flour tortillas? Though there are some traditional tortilla-to-filling pairings, for example fish tacos in corn tortillas, tortillas are very personal and you should use whatever kind your heart desires. I personally looooove paper-thin, super stretchy chewy flour tortillas for anything, but I also love the textural snap or handmade corn tortillas, so tbh, I usually have both on the table.
• Non-grain tortillas? If your lifestyle or health precludes you from consuming grains like wheat or corn, you can absolutely make Salmon Tacos with alt-flour tortillas. This brand makes all my favorites: almond flour tortillas, cassava flour tortillas, chickpea flour tortillas.
• Sour cream for yogurt. If you already have sour cream in your fridge, use it. It has the right amount of tang, same as yogurt! Sour cream also offers some probiotic qualities from the fermentation to make it sour, but generally has a higher fat and lower protein content than yogurt.
• Non-dairy sauce? If you are avoiding dairy, use a plain, unflavored, unsweetened plant-based yogurt like this one in place of the dairy yogurt. You can also use mayo/aioli (which is non-dairy, but may have animal products i.e. eggs) flavored with the same garlic and lime juice. To achieve the same level of tang of yogurt, add more lime juice.

Make Salmon Tacos into a Salad or a Bowl

Whether it's to "lighten" the load of tortillas or to keep your hands clean, throwing your tacos out of the tortilla and into a bowl and eating it with a fork (or spoon) is always a great idea! Cook and prep the individual components is the same, add one or two things to round out the salad or bowl, and obviously the assembly is slightly different. Here are the pro-tips:

Salmon Taco Salad: You will additionally need lettuce, tortilla chips, and the Cilantro Lime Dressing. Fill ½ of your salad bowl with shredded Romaine or iceberg lettuce. Fill ¼ of the salad bowl with the tangy Cilantro Lime Cabbage Slaw. Flake the salmon and add to bowl. To make the salad easier to eat, chop avocado and mango instead of slices and add to bowl. Add pickled onions. Crumble a few tortilla chips on top (just a few!). Drizzle with Cilantro Lime Dressing or Avocado Goddess Dressing and toss everything.

Salmon Taco Bowl: You will additionally need cooked quinoa (or rice). Fill ½ your bowl with cooked quinoa. Add Cabbage Slaw, salmon, avocado, mango, pickled onions. Garnish with extra chopped cilantro. Drizzle with Cilantro Lime Dressing.

To add even more nutrient density to a salad or bowl, add: cooked black beans for protein and fiber, roasted corn for fiber, chopped tomatoes for antioxidants

BEST Sauces and Salsas for Tacos

• Lime Pickled Onions
• Aji Verde, Peruvian Green Sauce
• Perfect Pickled Onions
• Cilantro Lime Dressing

_{Originally published May 2005, recipe updated May 2024}

Food for Afterthoughts

At one point in my life, I ate Wahoo’s Fish Tacos at least twice a week. After a Wahoo’s near my neighborhood opened, how could I not challenge myself to try every delicious thing on their menu? I mean, they have something called a Kahlua Pig Bowl! Kahlua. Pig. And holy shiitake, they have some pretty good beer-battered >Maui onion rings.

You would think that after seeing a restaurant featured on the Food Network, I would swear it off forever, especially since it’s a *gag* chain. But I just can’t help but love Wahoo’s Fish Tacos.

It was started back in 1988, which alone is reason to love it, for who doesn’t love crimping irons, leg warmers, and anything else that comes out of the 80s?!?! But Wahoo’s founding brothers’ background explains the first link in the restaurant chain and the strange influences on Wahoo’s menu.

The three brothers travel to places like Hawaii and Mexico to surf, they’re Chinese< and they lived in Brazil when they were kids. The rice that comes with most of the meals might seem Chinese, but seasoned heavily with parsley (maybe it’s cilantro!?) and garlic, it’s actually Brazilian. So are the black beans. So am I. The Asian heritage doesn’t show up in a big way really, except that the “hot sauce” in the small plastic to-go cups look very suspiciously like a dry version of sambal. And of course, the fish tacos, the basis for the restaurant, come from many years at the fish taco stands that line the beaches and streets of Ensenada where the brothers surfed.

Okay, so the first restaurant opened in Orange County, but we can forgive them for that one little fault.