Meal Prep: Salad in a Jar with Pulses

© Bean Beat

Insights from Cecilia Antoni

Goodbye supermarket salad, hello salad in a jar! The talented Cecilia Antoni led a Global Bean Meal Prepping Workshop during the 2024 Sustainability Festival on the Berlin Gobal Field. Attendees had the opportunity to participate in a hands-on experience, creating a delicious layer salad with fresh ingredients. Cecilia Antoni showed how preparing a “layer salad” with pulses is delicious, quick, healthy, inexpensive & uncomplicated. What more could you want? What’s more, the salad in a jar can be prepared in one go for several days and stored in the fridge until you need it. So it’s perfect for filling several jars for the working week.

Layer by layer.
Take a large screw-top jar (350 ml – 500 ml) and you’re ready to go. The only important thing is the order of the ingredients in the jar so that the salad stays nice and crunchy.

These are the individual layers:

1. dressing – The first layer in the jar is the dressing. This prevents the following ingredients from softening so quickly and makes the dressing itself even more flavourful.
2. solid ingredients – The second layer in the jar consists of ingredients that do not become mushy when they come into contact with the dressing. For example, filling carbohydrates such as couscous or crunchy vegetables such as carrots, radishes or cucumber – and of course cooked pulses!
3. soft ingredients – The penultimate layer contains soft and delicate ingredients, such as salad leaves or wild herbs, or oven-baked vegetables for a winter salad. This protects them from the dressing and keeps them crispy for longer.
4. topping – Finally, add all the ingredients you want to use as a topping. Sprouts, fresh herbs, edible flowers and roasted nuts and seeds for crunch are used here.

The salad is easy to take to work or a picnic in the park if it is well sealed in a jar. Just before eating, simply turn the jar upside down and shake vigorously so that the dressing and ingredients can mix together.

Another tip: Depending on the ingredients, the salad will keep in the fridge for 2 to 3 days.

© Bean Beat

Ingredients

• 100 g black lentils
• 1/2 watermelon
• 1 small red onion
• optional: 200 g feta
• 1 tbsp lemon juice
• 3 tbsp olive oil
• 3 stalks fresh mint
• salt & pepper

Ginger-mustard dressing:

• 1 tbsp apple cider vinegar
• 1 tsp lemon juice
• 1/2 tsp mustard
• A touch of freshly grated ginger
• Salt & pepper
• 3 tbsp rapeseed oil (native & cold-pressed)

Instructions

1. Roast the nuts and seeds in a pan without oil.
2. Wash all the fresh ingredients (radishes, cucumber, lettuce leaves, wild herbs), drain and chop.
3. For the dressing, mix all ingredients  and beat with a whisk until smooth.
4. To fill the glass, first pour the dressing.
5. Then add the chopped cucumber and radish slices.
6. Now add the cooked and cooled beans (2 tablespoons or more per jar, depending on jar size) or lentils (2 – 3 tablespoons per jar)
7. Add the lettuce leaves and/or wild herbs
8. And finally the topping with sprouts and roasted nuts and seeds.
9. Close the jar tightly with the appropriate lid and store in the refrigerator until use. It will keep for 2 to 3 days.
10. Just before serving, turn the jar upside down and shake it to mix the dressing and ingredients.

More information on the cook

My name is Cecilia Antoni, specialist in cooking pulses, food blogger (bean.beat) and freelance writer focusing on local pulses as well as creator of a successful broad bean snack (Bohnikat). Pulses have many nutritional values, are incredibly versatile and delicious, and yet are true underdogs in German kitchens, and this is what I would like to change. I am working with the Global Bean team to help internationally promote and expand the use and cultivation of legumes in our kitchens, gardens and fields.