Hey, there.
Lacey here with A Sweet Pea Chef, and today, I want to show you how to add more salads
into your weekly meals.
One of the biggest deterrents I used to have for having salads during the week was that
you couldn't prepare them ahead of time.
Nobody wants to eat soggy lettuce that's been sitting in a salad in your fridge for three
days.
It's just not going to happen.
Luckily, there's a way to prepare fresh and nutritious veggies in your salads ahead of
time.
And that is by using mason jars.
With mason jars, we can stack everything up.
So we can have the salad dressing at the bottom and then have the leafy greens all the way
at the top to keep them from getting soggy in the salad dressing.
To make these salads, any glass canning jar with a lid will do.
I use quart-sized mason jars that have a wide mouth, so that I can easily add in the veggies
and then also easily pour them out when it's time to eat.
All right, so let me show you how to prep a week's worth of salads in just a few minutes.
Let's get started.
First, we need to get our salad pieces together.
So for this recipe, we'll be preparing a delicious diced chicken salad with fresh cucumbers,
grape tomatoes, sliced almonds and goat cheese with a homemade clean honey-mustard dressing.
Just heat a tablespoon of olive oil in a skillet over medium-high heat until hot.
Season the chicken breast on both sides with a little kosher salt, ground black pepper
and garlic powder and then add them to the hot pan.
Cook, flipping occasionally until the chicken is well browned on both sides and cooked through.
About 10 to 12 minutes or until the inside reaches 160°F. Once it's cooked through,
remove from the pan and let cool.
Then dice it into bite-sized pieces.
Next, we need to dice up the cucumber.
I tend to peel my cucumber ahead of time because I find that the skin is usually too bitter,
but it's fine if you don't.
Dice the cucumber into bite-sized pieces as well just like with the chicken.
Now, we need to make our honey-mustard salad dressing.
So in a small bowl, combine the plain Greek yogurt, clean yellow mustard, raw honey and
freshly squeezed lemon juice.
We're going to whisk this until it's very smooth.
Now, we have all the pieces we need to assemble our mason jar salads.
I recommend preparing about three to five mason jar salads at a time.
Not only is this going to save you a lot of time in the future because you'll have ready
to go salads that you can eat, but it will also save you money because you won't be wasting
any of that additional produce because you're more likely to eat it if it's prepared already
for you.
With mason jar salads we always want to start with the salad dressing at the bottom.
This will keep it as far away from the lettuce as possible and will allow us to add in other
items that can avoid getting mushy.
We can add about one to four tablespoons of the dressing depending on how much you prefer
and how many other ingredients you're going to add.
Follow the dressing layer with the hearty ingredients that are hard, non-absorbent vegetables.
For this salad, that means we can use our grape tomatoes.
This could also include carrots, bell peppers and green beans and so on.
On top of this layer, we could add any proteins like beans chinoa and meats.
The salad we're making today doesn't have any beans or grains in it, but it does have
chicken.
So go ahead and add in that diced chicken into the next layer and make sure when you
add it in that it is not hot, that you've allowed it to cool completely.
We don't want to be accidentally cooking any of the salad when it goes in.
In the next layer, we add in any absorbent fruits or vegetables which include fresh fruits
like strawberries, peaches or blueberries or vegetables like mushrooms, broccoli, peas,
corn, beets, sprouts or zucchini.
These fruits and vegetables are all absorbent and would get super mushy and absorb way too
much of the dressing if it were put right on the dressing layer.
So we want to make sure that we separate them using the protein layer.
For our salad today, I'll be adding in our cucumbers.
You can also add in any seeds, nuts or cheese into this layer as well.
So I'm going to go ahead and add in our sliced almonds and our crumbled goat cheese on top
of the cucumber.
Finally, for the remainder of the jar and always on top is our leafy greens layer.
This includes spinach, arugula, mixed baby greens, kale or other greens that would easily
wilt or get soggy, and we don't want that.
For this salad, I'm using a baby green spring mix.
When you're ready to eat your salad, just unscrew the cap and shake the contents out
into a bowl.
With the lid sealed tightly and layered like I showed you, these mason jar salads will
last a good four to five days in your fridge and make the perfect grab and go lunch or
dinner for during the week.
All right, I hope you found this video helpful on meal prep and how to make your own mason
jar salads.
Meal prepping ahead of time is a great way to not only save time and hassle during the
week, you'll have that ready to go food that's healthy for you to stay on your healthy lifestyle.
Check out the Take Back Your Health Academy where I provide a new meal plan video just
like this every month for our members.
Thanks, I'll see you next time.