Summer Chef Salad

Hello! Welcome to Beyond Soy!

Here at Beyond Soy we love quick and easy soy-free meals. We often have busy evenings, and usually don’t want to spend too much of our free time making dinner. At the same time, we want a dinner that is healthy and relatively inexpensive. One of our favorite meals in the summer is a chef salad. It’s quick, easy, and light for a warm summer evening.

The chef salads that we make have three categories of ingredients: lettuce, toppings, and dressing.  To easily and quickly make the salad, select one more more types of lettuce (iceberg, romaine, spinach, etc), top it with whatever you'd like, and add some dressing. It is just that simple! We use a big bowl to mix everything together, and then add dressing individually (because Ashley and I prefer different dressings). 

image via pixabay

image via pixabay

Here are some good options for the salad:

  • Iceberg lettuce
  • Romaine lettuce
  • Red leaf lettuce
  • Green leaf lettuce
  • Spinach
  • Cherry or grape tomatoes
  • Green pepper (or jazz it up with red or orange peppers)
  • Chopped hard boiled egg
  • Olives
  • Mushrooms
  • Carrots
  • Radishes
  • Apples
  • Avocado
  • Ham (you can use lunch meat!)
  • Turkey (you can use lunch meat!)
  • Summer sausage
  • Salad dressing (make sure it doesn't have soybean oil! We like Brianna's.)
  • Shredded cheese

It is so quick and easy to toss a great salad that's filling, healthy, and cheap. Because it usually makes more than we can eat in one sitting, I've also gotten in the habit of taking leftover salad to work as lunch the next day. I leave a bottle of dressing in the refrigerator at work, pack up the lettuce and toppings in a tupperware container, and mix them up for a great salad lunch!