Make-Ahead Mason Jar Salads For The Week + A Killer Clean Honey Mustard Dressing! | A Sweet Pea Chef

Make-Ahead Mason Jar Salads For The Week + A Killer Clean Honey Mustard Dressing! | A Sweet Pea Chef

September 11, 2019 35 By William Morgan


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.

CategoryArticles
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