These Grilled Portabello Tacos with Red Chile-Yogurt Sauce were inspired by some Beer-Marinated Grilled Mushroom Tacos that I saw over at Oh My Veggies when I was searching for meatless main ideas. Kiersten’s tacos looked delicious, but I didn’t have all of the ingredients so I improvised (a great deal actually) with what I had on hand. The result was outstanding. Bobby and I enjoyed them so much that when we went to Pagosa Springs with some friends, this was the meal we chose to dish up on our night to cook. I had to increase the recipe a bit in order to serve 9 people, and in doing so, found that it is a very easy recipe to make for a small dinner party.
Grilled portabello tacos have a few easy steps, all of which go pretty fast and which can be done some what simultaneously by anyone, even those with minimal multitasking skills. The mushrooms are basted with a simple oil and spice mixture, then set aside while you make the simple sauce, heat up the grill and chop the vegetables for the squash mixture. Once the grill is hot, the mushrooms are grilled for about 8 minutes, then covered to stay warm. A quick sautéed of squash, onion and garlic finishes the cooking process. While sautéing the vegetables, you can warm the tortillas and crumble the feta. All you have left to do after that is assemble the tacos, grab a beer, and enjoy!
Grilled Portabello Tacos with Red Chile Yogurt Sauce
A decadent vegetarian tacos that would please even the biggest carnivore.
“*” See Kitchen Notes for more information or links to special ingredients.
- 2 large Portabello mushrooms, stems removed, cleaned, sliced into ½” slices
- 3 Tbsp. garlic infused oil or 3 Tbsp. olive oil and ¼ tsp. garlic powder
- 1 tsp. red wine vinegar
- ¼ tsp. smoked paprika
- Dash or two of salt
- Generous amount of pepper
- 1 Tbsp. olive oil
- 1/2 pound summer squash, sliced*
- ½ large onion, sliced thin
- 2 large garlic cloves, minced
- Salt and pepper to taste
- ½ cup red chile sauce or favorite salsa*
- ½ cup plain Greek yogurt
- 6 corn tortillas
- ½ cup feta cheese, crumbled
- ½ lime cut into 6 wedges
- chopped cilantro (optional)
- In a small bowl, whisk together the ingredients for the mushroom marinade (oil, garlic powder, smoked paprika, vinegar, salt and pepper).
- Lay the mushroom slices on a large plate or sheet pan.
- Brush both sides with coating.
- Prepare grill for a medium heat. Once hot, place mushrooms slices on the grill. Grill for 4 minutes per side.*
- In a large skillet, heat the oil over medium heat.
- Add the onion, squash, garlic, salt and pepper.
- Sauté, stirring frequently until vegetables are soft, about 4 minutes
- Whisk together the red chile sauce and the yogurt.
- Refrigerate until ready to assemble tacos.
- Heat up a cast iron griddle. Place 2 corn tortillas on the griddle.
- After about 30 seconds, flip the tortillas and heat for another 30 seconds or until both tortillas are soft and warm.
- Transfer to a tortillas warmer or wrap in clean dish towel to keep warm.
- Repeat with the remaining tortillas.
- Assemble tacos by placing 3 slices of mushroom down the middle of a tortilla, top with some of the squash/onion mixture.
- Squeeze a wedge of lime over the vegetables.
- Smother the vegetables with some of the red chile-yogurt sauce. Top with feta.
- Wrap and enjoy!
The Squash – Our preference for this dish is yellow summer squash, cut in half lengthwise, then sliced. However, you can use any summer squash or a mix of summer squash. For the tacos you see in the pictures, I used baby zucchini, sliced lengthwise then halved and baby patty pan squash, sliced. This mixture was also quite tasty.
Red Chile Sauce – I have to admit that the red chile-yogurt sauce is what really makes this meal. If you have time, you could make a batch of red chile sauce using pods or for an easy and fast sauce, make it with red chile powder. If you don’t have the red chile pods nor the powder, then just use your favorite salsa. However, if the salsa is chunky, then I would recommend blending it a bit.
Grilling the Mushrooms – When you only have two mushrooms to grill, laying them directly on the grill is quite doable. However, if you are cooking for a larger group, it is easier to lay the sliced mushrooms on aluminum foil. When we made these tacos for nine people we used six mushrooms, which yielded A LOT of slices. To make his life easier, Bobby placed aluminum foil on the hot grill and punch holes in it, and then placed the slices on the foil. It took longer to grill the mushrooms (about 15 minutes), but he didn’t have to turn the slices and the result was just as good.
For the carnivore – Crumble some cooked Mexican chorizo on top.
Speaking of Pagosa Springs, Colorado
A couple of weeks ago Bobby and I and some friends spent a few days in a friends’ house south of Pagosa Springs. There was lots of good food…
Grilled Three Cheese Pizza and Grilled Mushroom Tacos…
Good Drink…Great wine and Green Chile Beer from Riff Raff Brewing
Gorgeous sunrises…
Tube fishing in a lake that is too beautiful for words….
and lots of just hanging out in a gorgeous place…
Until next week, I hope you enjoy the scenery and the grilled portabello tacos!
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MJ, these tacos sound delicious…love vegetarian! They look so full of rich flavors blended perfectly together…you are amazing. Thanks for sharing this great recipe!
Thanks so much Jodee! Thank you for sharing my recipe with others! Have a marvelous week.
Now this looks like my kind of taco! They look light, but have a kick…yum x
Thanks Deena! Oh yea – it does have a kick to it. 🙂
Thanks for coming and linking up these tacos at The Weekend Social. All posts get pinned in our pinterest board! Please be sure to come back next week starting Thursdays at 9PM EST! I hope to see you there!
Thanks you Katerina!
Oh my! I just love the flavors you’ve got going on over here and wouldn’t miss my meat at all 🙂 Love the grilled mushrooms and the red chili yoghurt looks like the perfect sauce along with all the other wonderful toppings!!
Thanks so much Soni! Definitely a meal that makes you feel like you are eating meal, but you’re not.
These look fantastic! I love the creamy, smoky element. These would be sure to revive the same ole’ tacos!
Yes, the smokey element adds quite a lot to these tacos. Thanks!
Thanks for this great recipe! Something I’d do for meatless mondays.
You are most welcome Peachy! And thanks as always for dropping by!
What a scrumptious recipe for meatless tacos! The Red-Chile Yogurt Sauce sounds fantastic! I imagine it would be a outstanding salad dressing too.
Thanks Deb! Great idea on using the red chile-yogurt sauce as a dressing. I haven’t thought of that and I now I need to try it.
Since I don’t eat tons of meat…..I like it, just not loads of it. I pretty much adore this recipe!!!! Love all the flavors brought together, perfect dinner option. Your photos were stunning!!! Hugs, Terra
Thanks so much Terra! These tacos are definitely a great option to meat, something we love as well, but that we try to limit to only 3 to 4 days a week.
Grilling those mushrooms sounds like a great idea, then using that on tacos, YUM!!!
Thanks Raymund! To be honest, I’m hooked on grilled mushrooms!
That is delicious tacos plate MJ now I want to become your neighbor to taste this. yumm pinning.
Thanks Swathi! Wouldn’t that be fun to be neighbors! I could dish you and your family up New Mexican food and you could dish us up some of your delicious Indian food.
MJ, SO sorry I’ve been AWOL the last few weeks. My summer schedule has hijacked my blog reading time! Anyway, I’m back with lots of catching up to do. Love these tacos. I’m of the mindset that tacos have to have meat and you’ve convinced me with this recipe that that’s not true. They look delicious! Great photos from you trip as well!
Bill, welcome back! I hope you’ve been having a wonderful summer! I’ve slow down from blogging this summer as well. It’s amazing how busy summers become. Thanks for your wonderful comments as always! So glad to have convinced you that you don’t need meat in a taco. We eat a lot of veggie tacos. In fact, nowadays, I find ground meat tacos boring. 🙂
Oh wow, these sound amazing. I don’t normally eat portobellos (I eat lots of mushrooms though) but I’ll have to pick some up and try these. They sound amazing. And the sauce – YUM!
Thanks Joyti! We don’t normally eat portabellos either, but as a meat substitute, they work great and are so easy to grill. Hope you get a chance to try these tacos. They are quite good if I do say so myself. 🙂
I love tacos and these one with grilled veggies are looking so tasty and inviting!
Thanks Katerina! It’s pretty interesting how grilling can bring out different flavors in vegetables.
Beautiful landscapes of gorgeous locales, and the tacos are lovely. Vegetarian too! Bookmarked.
Thanks Minnie!
Such lovely photos MJ – what beautiful scenes those are!
Love these tacos too – there is something about zucchini and Mexican inspired food that is just so good and I love everything about this combination!
Thanks Donalyn! Pagosa is a beautiful place. You do see a lot of zucchini and other squash in Mexican food. I’m not sure why, but squash and chile is a great combination.
Did somebody mention cold beer? 🙂
You’re right, words aren’t big enough for those beautiful images… what a visual feast you and Bobby were treated to in Pagosa Springs. Whoa. And how about these portabello tacos? You’re on fire Mj!! Love full flavored, satisfying meals like this that come together easily — summer eating at its best. I want to drizzle your gorgeous chile-yogurt sauce all over my soft boiled eggs this morning 🙂 I know I would find a million uses for it. Gorgeous recipe (and beautiful images – love the bokeh in that first snap 😉 ).
Yep – cold Green chile beer no less. Actually these tacos are on fire. 🙂 That red chile – yogurt sauce is somewhat tame, but still provide a nice kick. And yes, it would be pretty good on the morning eggs. Thanks Darlin!
MJ, I think you are the only person in the world able to make tacos look so elegant and sophisticated! Having read the whole recipe, I’m sure I’d enjoy every single bit. And the sauce… the funniest thing is that your sauce reminds me in colour my sour cream and gochujan (Korean chile paste) sauce! And from what I read, yours is actually quite close in ingredients! Did you know that Portobello mushrooms are the button mushrooms but simply older? I learnt it reading several blogs and thinking… we don’t have this mushroom here, but then I checked and learnt that actually we do 🙂 Here it’s just called the same but is bigger! I’m looking forward to use them with tacos!
I was going to write something about the landscapes, but when I saw Green Chile beer, I got completely blown away! It sounds extraordinary!
You’re so sweet Sissi! Thanks! Yes, the sauce is very close to your sour cream and gochujan sauce. I’m sure the flavors are different, but the spiciness is still there in both. I learned about portabello recently as well. Bobby was reading a book on mushrooms and it brought it up. So glad you can get them there! They are pretty expensive here, but worth it. Actually, I was blown away by the green chile beer. It was weird because it smelled like green chile, but didn’t really taste like green chile. It was quite good and I’m not a beer drinker. 🙂
Damn, the title is already seducing me!!!
healthy and tasty,
the photographs made me drolling even more……
Thanks so much Dedy! They are healthy and tasty!
These tacos sound fantastic, MJ. Thanks, too, for the tip about s=using foil to grill a large number of slices. WIthout it, I would have burned half, to be sure. Pagosa Springs looks like a wonderful spot for a little R&R with good friends. The pictures are beautiful.
Thanks so much John! And you are most welcome about the aluminum foil tip. It works quite well no matter how many mushrooms you have.
You’re tugging at my heart strings with this recipe and those photos. Looks like a great time was had by all!
Thanks Debra! I think Pagosa is another place you’d love to visit!
I’m not a vegetarian but I love Portabello mushrooms so much that I don’t need any meat as long as mushrooms are in the sandwich, burgers or tacos! This looks amazing, and as my heat tolerance has been improving, I’m enjoying more and more spicy food (slowly). This is a perfect weekend meal with family!
Thanks Nami! The portabellos in these tacos do keep one from missing meat. They are already meaty. Glad to read that you’re working on your tolerance to spicy foods. For this sauce you can always add more yogurt if needed. Hope you and your family enjoy!
I love your recipe, I make something similar to this, but not as involved.
Thanks Lori! These are actually pretty easy to make, but yes, more involved than some.
Those photos of Pagosa Springs are breathtakingly beautiful, MJ. I love any kind of mushroom. These portabello tacos are fantastic.
Thanks Angie! Pagosa Springs is a beautiful place, so it’s very hard to not take a good picture. 🙂
You take evocative photos. I really feel a sense of place. This kind of a taco never entered my head. Duh. I love portabello mushrooms too. The chile yogurt sauce is a terrific idea.
Thanks so much Carol! If you love portabellos, then you’ll love these tacos!
You know what would complete me right now? Your incredible tacos with an extra dollop of that yoghurt sauce complete with a boat out on the lovely reservoir 😀
Cheers
Choc Chip Uru
Sounds very, very lovely Uru! Thanks!
This is making my mouth water.
Thanks Zaza and thanks for stopping by!
MJ, these tacos look so very good.. and the chili sauce sounds amazing! Beautiful photos, too…
Thanks so much Vivianne!
Amazing pics of nature and the tacos looking delicious. Portabello are so perfect for carnivores enjoying a veggie meal, the are so meaty (pardon the pun). Greta sauce to go with it too!
Thanks Evelyne! I think it’s the meatiness of the portabello that does make it such a delight with vegetarians and in vegetarian meals. My husband isn’t as big of a fan of portabello as I am, but with that sauce, he loves these tacos. 🙂
I wouldn’t miss the meat one bit! And what a gorgeous spot for a get away!
Thanks Liz! You’re right – you won’t miss the meat!
I want to go there!!
These tacos are a perfect meatless meal for me.
Thanks Maureen! You certainly don’t miss the meat with these. 🙂
Portabello mushrooms have such great flavor, don’t they? I use them all the time in cooking, but don’t think I’ve ever used them in tacos. Or in anything southwestern or vaguely Mex, for that matter. Love this, and that red chile sauce looks so terrific. Thanks.
Totally agree John! I also love the meatiness of the portabello. A great substitute for meats. 🙂 It’s surprising how well all types of mushrooms work with southwestern and Mexican foods. I use mushrooms a lot. Thanks for the comments!