These gluten-free Baked Chicken Tacos with Creamy Cilantro Sauce will quickly become a favorite family dinner recipe!
Hi friends!
It’s Taco…Wednesday? That can be a thing, right? In my world, every day is taco day. Although I’m typically a soft-taco kinda girl, these Baked Chicken Tacos are a new favorite of mine. I’m also usually a stovetop taco kinda girl…but it’s fun to change things up every once and a while.
When it comes to this recipe, I developed the sauce first. There’s a restaurant in town that uses a similar sauce in their recipes and also sells it by the bottle. My friend Jordan introduced me to it and after tasting it, I immediately bought a bottle and attempted to recreate it. No easy feat when there’s no ingredient list….but after a few tries, I think I got pretty close.
Baked Chicken Tacos with Creamy Cilantro Sauce
I had a batch in the fridge a few months ago when my parents were in town and they both loved it…so I knew it eventually needed to go on the blog. These tacos are the perfect vehicle for the sauce. It’s spicy and creamy and easy to whip up in a small food processor or blender.
Here’s how you make it:
PrintBaked Chicken Tacos with Creamy Cilantro Sauce
These gluten-free Baked Chicken Tacos with Creamy Cilantro Sauce will quickly become a favorite family dinner recipe!
- Prep Time: 10 minutes
- Cook Time: 20 minutes
- Total Time: 30 minutes
- Yield: 10 tacos 1x
Ingredients
- 1.25 pounds chicken, cooked as desired
- 1/2 cup shredded Mexican cheese
- tomato
- avocado
- hard corn stand-up taco shells
- 1/2 cup plain full-fat yogurt
- 3/4 cup fresh cilantro
- 1/4 cup fresh parsley
- 1 serrano pepper, optional
- 2 cloves garlic, minced
- 1 Tbsp lime juice
- 1–2 tsp sugar
- 1/2 tsp salt
Instructions
- Place taco shells in a 9×13 pan
- Fill with chicken and top with cheese.
- Bake at 400 degrees for 10-12 minutes or until chicken is warm and cheese is melted.
- While chicken is cooking, make the sauce. Combine yogurt, cilantro, parsley, pepper, garlic, lime juice, sugar and salt in a small food processor (or blender) and process until well combined. Taste and add more sugar if needed.
- Top tacos with tomato, avocado and cilantro sauce.
- Serve warm.
You could use regular hard shell tacos for this but I’ve found that the stand-up ones with the flat bottom are much easier to use.
You’ll notice I said cook chicken as desired. That’s because it doesn’t really matter what kind of chicken you use. I diced my fairly small and cooked in in a pan with a little bacon and some cumin. You could also use leftover grilled chicken or make some pulled chicken in your crockpot. On that note, you could easily use pork or beef or even tempeh or tofu in these!
Enjoy!
–Lindsay–
Taco Wednesday needs to totally happen if these are on the menu!! YUM!! I could drink the sauce
Tacos are good any day of the week, right?! These look fab!
Haha, I agree, taco day EVERY day! That sauce looks so fresh and creamy. Do you think it’d still work with coconut milk yogurt?
xxMeah
I think so!
Every day is taco day in my world too. These look great.
I just made baked tacos for the first time last week, and now we are hooked! next tine I will have to try your cilantro sauce – that sounds delicious
Love the delicious simplicity of this Lindsay! Tacos are the way to my heart!
What a great idea! And the sauce sounds like perfection!
These look awesome! I am “grain-free”, but I think that the filling looks like a GREAT salad! I’m definitely going to try this. Thanks for the recipe.
I love the idea of using leftover or meal prepped chicken for this dinner meal. Yum!
These sound amazing, I haven’t done chicken in my tacos since I started enjoying chicken again. I’ll have to give this one a try soon!