3 Ways to Incorporate Healthier Salads into Each Day

To make sure we’re doing everything we can to help you, I ask dozens of home cooks every single day, “What do you struggle with in the kitchen?” and I’ve received hundreds of heartfelt answers.

Even though everyone’s situation is unique, I’ve noticed a lot of common goals and struggles. Instead of just answering all these emails individually, I wanted to start answering these questions in a new ‘Dear Cook Smarts’ video series too.

Today, I’m super excited to announce our inaugural episode answering a question I see all the time: “How do I cook and eat healthy?”

There are so many ways to cook healthy so we’ll cover this topic over a series of posts. Today I’m focusing on everyone’s favorite first course, the salad (alright, maybe it’s not your favorite but it sure is healthier than fried calamari!).

Even if you’re already eating leafy greens regularly, I’ve got three ways to make salads an even healthier part of your life.

Watch the video or scroll on below (where you’ll find a free recipe and an awesome new infographic):

1. Begin Your Day with a Salad

I know it might seem weird to eat salad for breakfast, but it’s one of my favorite ways to fuel up. While I love carbs, having a carb-heavy breakfast (especially white carbs) is not the best way to wake your body up.

Salads on the other hand are full of high-fiber, low-glycemic ingredients that will help you feel satiated for longer and energetically power through to lunch. Plus a lot of great breakfast foods make great salad ingredients. You can download our Breakfast Salad recipe for free here:

2. Begin Your Meal with the Salad

Even if you can’t begin your day with a salad, try to begin lunch or dinner with a salad. Again, since salad ingredients are full of fiber and water, it causes you to feel full so you’ll likely tackle your main course with a little less gusto. If you’re looking to lose weight, this is a great way to eat a little bit less.

3. Make Your Own Dressing

As a kid, I would have been happy to drink Hidden Valley ranch dressing out of a sippy cup, and I didn’t discover that salad dressing could be homemade until a college summer abroad in Italy. Imagine my culture shock when server after server kept bringing me bottles of oil and vinegar instead of a salad smothered in creamy mayo and sour cream based ranch.

I adapted and in the 12 years since Italy, I haven’t purchased one bottle of dressing.

It was just so much more fun making my own, and it freed me from worrying about expiration dates, ingredients that I couldn’t pronounce, and bottles cluttering precious fridge space.

Instead, I started building a collection of vinegars which regularly consists of balsamic, red wine, apple cider and rice, which is plenty for a variety of homemade vinaigrettes.

To help you ditch the bottled salad dressings, we created this easy-to-use infographic to get you inspired. Use our cooking formula as a start, and then get creative from there! Just remember to taste, taste, taste until you get the mix of flavors that bring your salad to life!

Cooking Smarts:

• The vinaigrette infographic above is a handy chart to keep around for reference, but if you’d like to see it in action, check out our video below on how to make a vinaigrette and watch how we make our 3 favorite vinaigrettes.
• To check out more of our salad recipes, click here.

If you’ve got some great salad ideas, share them with the rest of the Cook Smarts community down in the comments below!

As always, we strive to help you live simpler, smarter, and healthier in the kitchen, so that you can cook with confidence and ease. To get even more helpful cooking resources and tips every week, join our cooking community by signing up for our newsletter below and get ready to raise your kitchen IQ.