Do Your Homemade Salads Suck? You’re Making Them Wrong – 5 Amazing Salad Tips

If you don’t like salads, if you think they taste bad or leave you hungry, then chances are you’re making them wrong. Anyone who doesn’t like salads just doesn’t know these amazing salad tips. Seriously. This is coming from someone who used to hate salads.

I’ve been there. Salads used to just leave me hungry. They were flavorless and very much unappealing and I thought anyone who liked salads just lied for street cred. Keep reading to find out the only salad tips you need to make your salads a whole meal.

5 Salad Tips to Make Your Salads Taste Better and Healthier

Let’s jump right into it. It’s time to step up your salad game and make them amazing. Salads can be a whole meal and a half with these amazing salad tips. Plus, stick around for a life-changing bonus tip I use almost every day!

1. Bulk Up on Protein

The most important part of any meal has to be the protein. Protein fills you up as it takes longer to digest than other nutrients. Aside from that, protein is full of essential vitamins, minerals, and amino acids that your body needs. This is particularly true if you do any sort of exercise as protein contains the building blocks for your body to recover, repair, and grow stronger. 

Pick a protein to add to your salad. It can be eggs, chicken, beef, etc. Use tofu, soybeans, edamame, or tempeh if you want to make the meal vegan. As long as you add it to your salad, you are one step closer to making something that resembles more of a meal than an appetizer.

2. Crunch is Essential (Unless You hate Crunch)

Crunch is very powerful. Not to sound pretentious, but texture is a beast when it comes to a meal experience. It adds a different mouth feel that makes you interested in eating. Food is not just about fueling the body, it’s about enjoying the meal.

Texture in salad can come from protein, yes, but it can also come in the form of nuts, dried fruits, berries, or croutons. Add some crushed protein chips, tortilla strips, bacon bits, etc. Have fun with your salad.

3. Flavor is Your Friend

It’s time to be honest. Most vegetables taste like nothing. A cucumber is just crunchy water. So is lettuce. Spinach has a taste but it’s not even that good. We as humans are designed to crave fats and sugar and other high-calorie nutrients. It’s our ancestors bulked up to survive a harsh winter. But I digress, the point is flavor in salad is not optional. It has to be added. 

4. Skip Store Bought Dressing

Store-bought salad dressing is a scam. It is full of crap ingredients like sugar, high fructose corn syrup, thickeners, fillers, and a bunch of other ingredients that have no reason to be in the dressing. Salad dressing is super easy to make too.

You need salad dressing because you need to add some sort of fat to your salad for some fat-soluble vitamins and minerals to be absorbed. Plus, that will help keep you fuller for longer and give you a good amount of energy with your salad. A simple salad dressing can be lemon, Olive oil, salt, and pepper. Explore other flavors like making a soy sauce peanut butter sweet and spicy dressing or a Greek yogurt, garlic, and lemon dressing. Salad dressing is just about playing around with spices and adding them to a vinegar or yogurt base.

5. Portion Control Who?

Portion control can go out the window for salads. This means you can make yourself a huge bowl of spinach, lettuce, watercress, arugula, cucumber, etc. You can track your protein, topping, or dressing if you need to take into account the protein or fat that you’re eating, but there’s no need to keep track of the amount of greens you’re eating. These have a negligible amount of calories and all they do is give you a good amount of fiber, vitamins, minerals, and other nutrients that you need.

Bonus Tip: Drink Your Salads (Not Gross, Promise)

Okay, this sounds weird, but if you don’t want to make your salad, if you don’t want to take the time to add protein, or toppings, or make your own dressing, then just drink your salad. And no, I don’t mean liquefying a salad, I mean making a green smoothie.

Green smoothies are simple. If you have extra spinach, cucumber, celery, or any other neutral vegetable that does not have a strong taste, just freeze them. Try to avoid harsh vegetables like radishes, green peppers, or others that have a distinct flavor. Lettuce can work, a bit of arugula, or even some carrots. Once you want to eat your salad, add a serving of Greek yogurt, a couple of berries, you’re Frozen greens, and a dash of sweetener. I like using stevia. Blend it all together and now you have a thick smoothie that is basically a salad.

The Takeaway

Salads can be good if we let them be. If we use these amazing salad tips, then we are making salads taste better, we are making them healthier, and we are making them work with us, not against us. Salads shouldn’t leave us hungry and mad. Salads can be a fun and tasty experience. All you need to do is add protein, healthy fat, and well, a bunch of other things. You can add texture, flavors, and make your own dressing. Plus, at the end of the day, if you don’t want to eat your vegetables, drink them in a smoothie.

Remember that health comes from within. Eat nutritious food, exercise when you can, and take care of your mental health. The small daily habits you cultivate become the basis for overall wellness. Don’t forget about microbiota health too! Gut microbiota affects the entire body, from the skin to muscles, to immune and mental health! Get all the resources you need about microbiota health for free here!