This casserole recipe combines shredded cabbage, super taco meat, low carb salsa, cheese, green onions, olive oil. Toppings are optional, but recommended: sour cream, guacamole or diced avocados, and chopped green onions.

The main star ingredient in this taco hot dish is shredded cabbage. I was NOT a huge cabbage lover before, but after this keto taco casserole, I’ve been thoroughly convinced.  Who would have thought that there would be ketogenic cabbage recipes out there worth trying! Great keto replacement for rice in any Mexican dish!

I’ll let you in on a little secret…when I’ve been in a hurry, I haven’t precooked the cabbage. It turns out delicious that way, too! But yes, I do steam the cabbage first.

When cabbage is steamed, it loses some of its strong, sulfury flavor. My kids definitely like it better steamed first. Before adding the shredded cabbage to this keto taco casserole, I steam it till it’s tender, but not completely cooked. You definitely don’t want soft or mushy cabbage in your taco hot dish.

I purposely measured my shredded cabbage in cups because cabbages vary so much in size. There’s a lot of wiggle room here, so feel free to add or subtract a cup of cabbage if you choose.

When your cabbage is shredded, you’ll need to steam it before adding it to the keto taco casserole. There are two ways to do this: the “correct” way and the lazy way.

The correct way is to put a little water in a pot, boil it, add a steamer basket to the pot, fill it with your cabbage, cover, and steam for 5-6 minutes.

The lazy way (my preferred method) is to just fill a pot with about 1 inch of water, boil it, add the cabbage, cover, and steam for 5-6 minutes, stirring once or twice. I say that I prefer this method because 1) sometimes I choose a huge cabbage that doesn’t fit in my steamer, and 2) it’s easier to just use a slotted spoon to get most of the cabbage out and then use a strainer to dump the water into and catch the rest of the cabbage. It seems a bit messier with a steamer because of how small the cabbage is shredded.