How to create the perfect salad? There is probably no dish that is more useful and quick to prepare than a salad. It is a special combination of the main ingredient and colorful components, including spices, seeds, dried fruits, and several types of dressing. You change one thing, and the atmosphere of the feast instantly adapts to the new story.
In this matter, you need to know exactly what needs to be removed from the cutting board, which product is combined with the other four, and how to combine all the subtleties so that the benefits, lightness, and taste become the main qualities of your dish. Time for new tonic formulas – spin the drum of benefits and read the article.
A little knowledge in the kitchen can often only provide taste. All you need is to be familiar with the names of your favorite vegetables and legumes, which in combination will provide half an hour of bliss during a meal. But is this all we want to do? Of course not. Let’s at least figure out the following points:
Nutritional Combo. What goes with what and what doesn’t go with what?
- To make the salad as healthy and light as possible, it is better not to combine the fruits with anything else.Pear, orange, pineapple – it doesn’t matter what exactly, but it starts to rot. If you want fructose, use a salad of natural seasonal “sweets” as an alternative. The founder of the theory of separate nutrition, Herbert Shelton, confirms that “we do not benefit from food that is not digested. Eating and spoiling food in the digestive tract at the same time is a waste of food.”
- Do not combine starch with proteinsThe simplest option, of course, is a vegetable salad, but do not forget that avocado, potatoes, and corn belong to a completely different category – starches, which are not easy for our body to digest in combination with proteins, and sometimes with fats. They are best mixed with pumpkin, squash, lettuce, carrots, peppers, beets and green beans.
- Combine vegetable fats with your favorite additives.Nuts, seeds, proteins, mushrooms, beans, and legumes are ideal in combination only with vegetable fats and, of course, with the vegetables listed above.
- Don’t forget the greens!An excellent habit would be to add a bunch of greens – this is always the key to successful digestion.
There are actually a few healthy salad formulas, but they are all healthy and nutritious in their own way. Here are some of them:
Sweet fruits + sour fruits + honey with spices = a fructose boost
Fats + greens + vegetables = a clever snack
Fats + Starches = Brainstorming
Starches + vegetables + greens = a filling lunch
Vegetables + Protein = Pre-Workout
Vegetables + cooked vegetables = lightness
Proteins + fats = protein boost
Balanced composition. What to add to the salad?
- Green vegetables are a great choice for a light snack.But don’t forget about phytonutrients. Eggplants improve brain function, and tomatoes have the highest levels of lycopene, which helps fight heart failure.
- Add a nutritious boost for a more filling meal.Don’t get hung up on “water” carbohydrates alone, as they may not always fill you up and be healthy. For example, an iceberg salad with cucumber and radish doesn’t have as much nutritional value as a combination of nuts, mushrooms, eggplant, and sesame seeds. “One bunch of iceberg lettuce contains 1 liter of water,” notes food journalist Tamar Haspel in an article about the overrated importance of lettuce for The Washington Post, and recommends replacing it with kale leaves, which have twice as many nutrients. Opt for avocados, which are loaded with sweet healthy fats, or unroasted walnuts. But be careful with potatoes. They greatly affect blood sugar levels, causing swelling.
- The protein will make the salad a complete meal for dinner.A great addition would be vegetable protein – bulgur, quinoa, or small chickpea cutlets. After all, a salad can serve not only as a side dish or an addition but as a full dinner. Here it is important to first understand the main ingredient, which can be vegetable or animal protein, as well as starch or boiled vegetables: salmon, seafood, chicken fillet, sweet potato, beetroot, pumpkin, and others. It is easier to decide on additional ingredients based on the separate nutrition system. They can be greens, vegetables, fats, sour berries, superfoods, and feta cheese. Here it all depends on what exactly you want to get from the salad: satiety, lightness, or both at once. In any case, do not forget about the dressing, which is not inferior in value to the main ingredients.
Useful and useless dressing. How to choose the right dress?
Cook it yourself: 4 easy dressings.
- The best dressings are prepared sauces. For example, Asian plum or coconut sauce . Cranberry sauce with ginger and lemon or universal pesto sauce. Honey is also a great addition to the salad, as a small amount of honey will help the beneficial microelements to be absorbed faster.
- Do not use mayonnaise for dressing.
- Mayonnaise contains a lot of chemical fillers and this ruins all the benefits of carbohydrates and other macronutrients in your salad.
- Sunflower oil is not suitable for salads.
- Oils – it depends on which ones. Sunflower and olive oils, for example, have too high a content of omega-3 and omega-6 acids, which, when processed in a certain way, immediately pollute the body and only complicate the digestion process. You can read more about oils in our previous articles: vegetable, nut, seed. To understand which ones you need, watch the process , which includes extraction, bleaching, deodorization, and other procedures.
- The less salt, the better.
- Another ingredient that is at odds with the benefits is salt. It is important to understand that every bit dries up all the nutrients that you have so carefully selected. There are also healthier types of salt, we discussed them in detail in the article “Other Salt”.
- Lemon juice – helps with the absorption of all ingredients.
- But lemon juice always saves! Even when some vegetable from the nightshade family, potatoes, peppers, eggplants, or tomatoes, is combined with cucumbers (which is not the best combination), lemon juice perfectly smooths out all the nuances.
- Balsamic vinegar is bad for digestion.
- But balsamic and other kinds of vinegar only add these nuances, increasing the acidity of the stomach. In addition, you can often encounter counterfeits when the label indicates grape must concentrate, sugar, thickeners, and wine vinegar.
- Therefore, it is important to differentiate dressings into healthy ones, such as homemade sauces, citrus juice, and honey; not-so-healthy ones: vinegars, and oils with a high concentration of acids; and useless ones: mayonnaise, ketchup, and sauces with a long list of chemical additives in the composition.
