If you're stuck with the same boring lettuce salad, it's time to jazz up your lunch box and give our colourful chicory salad a try.
We made a delightful combo of buttery avocado, crunchy red chicory, sweet spinach and tender lentils. And if it couldn't get tastier than this, we added a juicy chia blueberry dressing.
We love preparing salads as they're a quick and practical way to pack a complete meal in our lunch box.
So, we designed this recipe to include as many nutritious ingredients as we could.
The result is a well-balanced, vegan salad bursting with antioxidants, plant-based proteins, and fibres. Plus, it's got health-boosting superfoods to boot.
Red chicory, AKA radicchio, is a bittersweet leafy veggie loaded with free radical-fighting antioxidants and a whopping 170% RDI of vitamin K per serving [1]. Avocado provides healthy unsaturated fats, while spinach packs calcium and iron [2].
Our sweet and sour blueberry dressing is made with fresh berries, chia seeds and lime juice. It's just perfect for drizzling, and it brings this lovely salad to a whole new level of goodness.
And in case you want to try the salad with another health-boosting dressing, this anti-inflammatory turmeric and olive oil vinaigrette is spot on.
Ready in just 15 minutes and with less than 350 calories, this healthy, diet-friendly salad is sure to become your new meal-prepping favourite and keep you full and satisfied for long.
Ingredients
Red Chicory | 170 g |
Avocado | 1/2 |
Canned Brown Lentils | 300 g |
Baby Spinach | 120 g |
Fresh Blueberries | 160 g |
Chia Seeds | 2 tsp |
Lime | 1 |
Walnuts | 20 g |
Step 1
To prepare the chicory, trim the stem of the chicory head and let the leaves fall apart. Alternatively, cut it into quarters and then chop them into bite-sized pieces.
Then, peel and core the avocado and slice it into wedges. Drain and rinse the canned lentils.
Now, add the chicory, avocado, lentils, and baby spinach leaves to a bowl.
Step 2
Add 80 g of blueberries to a food processor followed by lime juice and chia seeds.
Blitz the ingredients into a smooth and runny dressing.
Step 3
Next, finely chop the walnuts and add them to the bowl along with the remaining 80 g of blueberries.
Finally, pour the chia blueberry sauce over the salad, season with salt and pepper, and toss well.
Tips
You can swap chicory with red cabbage, and spinach with rocket, as we did in this healthy salad for inflammation. You can also try it with raw kale, as in this spicy kale edamame salad, or tender watercress as in this roasted pumpkin quinoa salad.