Chopped Chickpea Salad Recipe. This protein and fibre rich salad will keep you filled up for hours. Its grain free, vegan and gluten free.
With meal prepping most of the ingredients and little bit of mix and matching the ingredients, you can have the same salad but with variety for each day of the week without feeling bored.
This chopped chickpea salad is my most favorite salad that I make on most days & pack it for work.
This is also the only salad that the entire family will eat without looking down their nose. My husband is a person who would rather go hungry than eat a salad but even he loves to eat a few tablespoons of this at lunch times.
Why I love this Chopped Chickpea Salad?
Because there are so many variations you can do with this. You can add or subtract the ingredients based on your liking and availability.
Most importantly, I meal prep most of the ingredients during weekend and can easily assemble a salad for the rest of the week thereby saving time, fuel and energy.
Ease of mix and match of ingredients. For example, I do not eat raw onions. As I found that it is one of the reasons that triggers IBS in me, I never add it to any of the salads I eat. But still this salad tastes great despite the lack of sharp taste and pungency of the onions.
Customize the Salad to your taste:
Basically chopped salads do not require any particular recipe. All it takes is a little bit of your imagination, inspiration and willingness to experiment with ingredients available on hand.
Legumes: I mostly use chickpeas but sometimes also use green mung dal, black chickpeas or horse gram. You can also add quinoa, millets to this, if you wish to add some grains.
Vegetables: Other than the veggies given in the recipe you can also use zucchini, corn, ridge gourd, beetroot, green-red-yellow bell peppers, chayote (chow-chow), long yard beans etc., (all raw of course).
Fruits: I love adding pom pearls as they add a zing to the salad. Instead you can use halved green or black seedless grapes, chopped apple, pear, figs, orange or grape fruit segments etc.,
Protein: Want to add in extra protein, then add grilled paneer or tofu cubes, crumble feta cheese over the salad, add in hard boiled eggs, extra nuts like salted cashews, roasted peanuts, almonds or pine nuts. If you are allergic to nuts, then add seeds like pumpkin, sunflower or melon seeds.
Greens: You can always add in chopped romaine or arugula or any salad green of your choice. But for people who do not have access to it, good old coriander leaves or parsley will do just fine.
(This picture was shared on my Instagram Stories)
Meal Prepping the Ingredients:
Chickpeas: I soak and pressure cook chickpeas on Sunday, drain it and refrigerate it in either a Tupperware or a ziplock cover and it lasts me upto 5 days or a week. The same goes for mung beans, black chickpeas, quinoa and millets.
Veggies: Except tomato, onion and cucumbers, I either chop or process in my food chopper and refrigerate it and use them within 3 days.
Fruits: Remove the arils from the pomegranate, chop the apples and pear, toss them in lemon juice to prevent oxidisation, remove the grapes from the vines, soak them in a mix of vinegar and water, rinse and refrigerate in the fridge upto 3 or 4 days.
Protein: You can hard boil the eggs and refrigerate it. You can also grill the tofu or paneer with spices of your choice and refrigerate it.
Dressing:
The dressing given in the recipe will suit most of the variations. Since I make it in bulk and store a portion of it at work, I do not use lemon juice to make it last longer.
Feel free to experiment by using balsamic vinegar, red wine vinegar or by adding dijon mustard, steeping crushed garlic and shallots in the dressing, adding dry herbs like crushed mint, dill, basil, oregano, thyme to the dressing.
These are just few basic ideas to give you variations and also to make you not feel bored.
You can also check out these other salad recipes,
Cucumber Salad with lime dressing
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Chopped Chickpea Salad Recipe details below:
Chopped Chickpea Salad
Ingredients:
- Chickpeas, cooked & drained - 1 cup
- Cucumber - 1
- Tomato - 1
- Carrot - 1
- Onion, small - 1
- Raw green mango - 1/2
- Pomegranate Arils - 1/2 cup
- Coriander leaves - 1/4 cup
Dressing:
- Apple cider vinegar - 1/4 cup
- Extra virgin olive oil - 2 tsp
- Pink salt - to taste
- Freshly ground black pepper - to taste
Instructions:
Preparation:
- Cucumbers should be halved lengthwise and cut into 1/2-inch slices.
- Deseed tomatoes and chop it.
- Dice onion, carrot and raw mango.
- Remove the arils from the pomegranate.
Make the dressing:
- In a small bowl or bottle, add all the dressing ingredients.
- Either whisk or shake until the dressing gets emulsified.
Make the salad:
- Place all the ingredients for the salad in a large bowl.
- Drizzle the dressing and toss well to combine.
- Serve immediately or chilled.
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