Anyone who says you can’t win friends with salad is lying to you!
Salad is one of the funniest meals we know so we’re sharing our love of salad with you with this new delicious recipe!
Whether you have allergies or not, keeping your meals light and fresh helps with the digestive system. Especially if you rarely have vegetables as part of your day, or have a household of meat eaters who desperately need a break from it (even if they don’t know it!)
But the hard part about convincing someone, even yourself, to make and eat a salad is that salad often gets a bad rap. It is quite often deemed boring, bland, or not enough food for a full meal. So Allergy Schatz is here to help you with that!
Credit: Photo meme from https://punsandoneliners.com/randomness/salad-jokes/
This poached chicken and green bean salad is one of our favorites, especially since this salad is great with or without the chicken. Poached chicken isn’t something you see on the menu very often , but makes the chicken fall apart so easily it melts in your mouth.
Poaching the chicken is an optional step for those meat eaters out there but keep in mind that this salad can stand alone without the chicken.
To poach the chicken, put the chicken in a large saucepan and fill the pan with 4 cups or water or, until the water has completely covered the chicken breasts. Add in 3 tbsp of salt, cover, and set heat to med/high. Allow the pan to boil gently. Then flip chicken, recover pot, and pull pan from heat. Do not open the pot as the chicken will still be cooking.
While you are waiting for your chicken to cook, you can start on the rest of the salad. Before you start, I really want to make sure I instill some addional confidence in you. You can make a resataurant style salad at home. Just know that great salad takes time, and all in all, this salad will take you about 30 mins to make, but will be a great addition to your forever menu, and is perfect for meal prep.
The best way to make this salad quickly is to make sure you have all your veggies washed and sliced before putting it all together. This means halving your lemons so they'll fit in your lemon squeezer, quatering your radishes, and trimming the ends of your green beans, and slicing any other veggies. Don't forget to also have your bowls, cutting boards, and other kitchen tools ready.
To trim green beans easily, I like to use kitchen scissors to do a quick snip on either end, and then toss those ends into the trash. If you don't have a lemon squeezer for your lemon juice, thats ok. They can be hand squeezed but, you will get more juice out it with a kitchen tool and also save your hands some unnecessary fatigue.
You'll need all the strength in your hands you can reserve because you'll also need to use your rolling pin to smash the green beans open, and a whisk to blend together the mustard and olive oil, whisking at a moderate pace until ingredients are well blended and dressing is thick.
While you will be using the dressing you make to dress your salad when all is done, you will also need this dressing in the actual making of the salad. It will help enrich the salad flavor and prevent it from being too dry (green beans can be very dry if they haven't been cooked so you'll need to make sure they are well dressed before adding to the rest of the salad).
When plating your salad, keep in mind that the larger the plate, the more likely you are to put more on it. So if your meat eaters need a little meat break, you might want to hand them a smaller plate. Once your salad is complete, you can plate and drizzle with the dressing you made. For visual effect, I also love to sprinkle with a few extra green onion slices sot the colors really come together.
And that's it! Your gorgeous restaurant style salad is done and ready to enjoy. Visit the recipe below and let us know how it goes. We want to hear what you think so comment below or tag us on instagram @AllergySchatz
