Meal Prep Ideas Vegan Salads for 1 week – Around an hour of work and you have a week’s worth of healthy salads ready – vegan and gluten free too! Get all the necessary resources in this post.
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If you didn’t know that meal prep was a buzzword in food circles these days…..well you know that now ????
After reading all those guides and seeing the mind bogglingly precise meal prep ideas on Instagram, I finally bit the bullet. I decided to start small with my salad for supper, for the whole week.
School vacations are on, and if you are a parent you know that it means we have to work overtime. Especially if you are on a limited screen time allotting plan, you are dead meat. This is SO TIRING! So it’s not a surprise that I’m not left with much energy to prepare my dinner. Now this is a dangerous situation to be in, especially if one is trying to eat healthy. So preparing one salad for each night using these meal prep ideas ensures that my dinner is taken care of. And each of these vegan salads are balanced with good carbs, vegan protein like beans and tofu, an array of colourful veg. Paired with any flavourful salad dressing, they make for a delicious meal in a bowl.
The ingredient list for this meal prep for vegan salads is a little longer than that in my usual recipes, but do note that this will serve to make 5-6 salad boxes. Some of the prepped ingredients may be leftover after prepping the 5 boxes, so feel free to use them in any other dish.
Consider these meal prep ideas for vegan salads for the week as an outline. The following week you can replace brown rice with millets or quinoa, rajma can be replaced by cooked chickpeas or black eyed peas, and go with any other selection of vegetables and dressings for a whole new set of salads.
I have mixed and matched the prepped ingredients into different combinations to keep the meal interesting.
This is me taking baby steps into the big world of meal prep and I’m sure you’ll be hearing a lot more about this from me.
So here’s what I feel are the advantages of meal prep:
- Prep once for a meal for the whole week
- Ensure you stay on the healthy eating track, no chance for impulse eating (read, takeaway), because you have no energy to cook
- Saves precious weeknight time
- Makes the best use of available ingredients
The other meal prep I see myself doing is for breakfast – preparing 5 bottles of overnight oats with a variety of toppings and putting them away in the fridge. No more spending my precious morning hours thinking what to make! My kid is a creature of habit, he’ll happily eat scrambled egg and a bowl of muesli and milk for breakfast everyday, other than the occasional demand for pancakes. That of course, I am happy to give in to, after all I do need some good content for the blog!
So let’s get on with meal prep ideas vegan salads for the week.
Resources:
How to prepare creamy turmeric dressing
How to prepare soy ginger dressing
One of the salad bowls
Meal Prep - Vegan Salads
Ingredients
- 1 cup brown rice
- 1 tsp coconut oil
- 1 cup small kidney beans
- 1 small cabbage
- 1 red bell pepper
- 1 yellow bell pepper
- 1 medium cucumber
- 1 medium carrot
- 1 medium radish
- 1 mixed lettuce bag (2 packed cups)
- 200 grams firm tofu
- 1 tbsp sesame seeds
- 1/4 tsp smoked paprika
- 1/4 tsp black pepper
- 1 tsp soya sauce (for GF option, use tamari)
- 2-3 tbsp olive oil
Instructions
- Beans: Soak the kidney beans overnight. Drain the soaking water, add 3 cups water in a pressure cooker and pressure cook the beans for 3 whistles. When cooker has cooled, open and drain the cooked beans. Keep aside.
- Rice: Wash the rice 2-3 times until the water runs clear. Cook in a rice cooker with 1 tsp coconut oil, 1/2 tsp salt. Once cooked, fluff the grains and keep aside.
- Vegetables: Preheat the oven to 190°C. Line a sheet pan with foil or parchment.
- Slice the cabbage into 1/2 inch thick rounds. Arrange on the baking sheet. Cut the bell peppers around the sides into 4 pieces, avoiding the core with the seeds. Arrange on baking sheet. Drizzle olive oil over the cabbage steak and bell peppers. Sprinkle salt and bake for 30-40 minutes. Remove the roasted veggies and keep aside.
- Using a julienne peeler or spiraliser, shave off noodles from the carrot, cucumber and radish.
- Greens: Wash the lettuce / greens 2-3 times in a tub of water, shaking off any sand. Dry the leaves in a salad spinner. Cut into bite sized pieces and keep aside.
- Tofu: Cut tofu into 8 pieces and mop dry with a cotton towel. Heat some oil in a pan. Add sesame seeds, smoked paprika powder and add the tofu pieces. Keep tossing on high flame until they are golden brown. Add the soya sauce and toss well for 1-2 minutes. Keep aside.
To prepare the 5 vegan salad bowls - take 5 clean, dry boxes. Place 100 grams cooked rice in each.
- Box 1 and 2: In addition to the rice, serve 50 grams cooked beans. Chop the roasted cabbage steak into bite sized pieces and add to both boxes. If possible peel off the skin from roasted bell peppers and add 1 piece of each chopped into bite sized pieces. Add a handful of mixed lettuce.Dressing: Creamy turmeric dressing
- Box 3: In addition to rice, serve 50 grams beans. Add some carrot, radish and cucumber noodles to the bowl. Add handful of mixed lettuce.
- Box 4 and 5: In addition to rice, add lettuce, roasted cabbage and peppers, carrot, radish and cucumber noodles and top with 4 pieces of sesame tofu on each. Dressing: Soy honey ginger dressing
This is mouth watering… What spiralizer do you use?