Ever have a salad so good, you can’t help but fall head over heels and make every day for weeks? I mean, salads aren’t exactly a favorited lunch option. I prefer making a meal using my lunchbox formula or a good ol’ sandwich combo. But if I find a salad that I actually enjoy eating, I obsess over it for a while. This apple kale salad is certainly one of them!
It’s one of those salads you can easily store in a mason jar, making an even easier lunch to transport to work.
Avoid browning apples
While I could meal prep a few of these salads in mason jars for the week, I want to avoid the apple bits from browning, so I just make it the day before. It still tastes just as fresh the next day, especially when you layer it in this particular way (pictured below.)
However, I will prep the chicken on Sunday night so I can easily chop it up and add it to the salad, without having to cook chicken every single night.
The trick with kale salads
If you’re new to eating kale, you may notice that kale can be harder to chew on—and, in return, not pleasurable to eat. I have a few tricks to make this better.
Take out all of the tough stems: Getting a large bag of curly kale is easiest for me, but that does mean some of the pieces still have the hard stem that kale grows on. I simply pluck out or break off those tougher stems and compost them.
Stir the salad dressing in real good: Kale is much easier to eat when it is softened with a dressing. I find oil-based dressings to be ideal for kale salad in terms of taste. I like a balsamic vinaigrette, which you can grab my recipe in my cookbook.
Use different nuts
I actually enjoy this salad with almonds as well as walnuts. Sometimes even candied walnuts! You can choose either of these for your salad, whatever you prefer (or have on hand.)
Alright, here’s my apple kale salad recipe!
Apple Kale Salad
Ingredients
- 1 cup curly kale stems removed
- 2 oz. chicken breast cooked
- 1 oz. goat cheese
- 1 oz. nuts walnuts or almonds
- 1/2 apple diced
- 1 tbsp balsamic vinaigrette
Instructions
- To layer in a mason jar, place the balsamic first followed by the diced apple, nuts, goat cheese, chicken breast, and kale.
- If you would rather a larger container, place all of the ingredients into a container and separate the dressing into a smaller container. For ultimate freshness, wait to dice up the apple until you are ready to eat.
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[…] lunch this past week, I pulled out a classic favorite of mine: the Apple Kale Salad! Except I didn’t really have enough kale to make full salads with it all week, so I mixed the […]