Lightened Up Cobb Salad – With Kale!

Oh, the salad. The salad can be one of the healthiest meals you eat or one of the most fattening.

To this day there are still people who think that because they’re eating a salad, they are choosing the healthiest meal option. You may be very right, but you could also be very, very wrong.

Especially in a restaurant setting, salads can be dangerous. Yes, you are getting greens and veggies but often salads are dressed in high saturated fat creamy dressings or high refined sugar vinagrettes while topped with too many nuts, sweetened dried fruit and too much cheese, the calories can really add up. 

The Cobb Salad can be especially calorie heavy. I’m guilty of ordering one myself before I knew the truth. The delicious mix of hard-boiled egg, avocado, chicken, bacon, bleu cheese and creamy dressing often will cost you around 1000 calories. 1000 calories?!?! Yep. 

So I’ve taken it upon myself to create a lightened up version of the Cobb Salad/Chef’s Salad with a homemade creamy, tangy, delicious ranch dressing that is LOW in saturated fat. You’re welcome.

 

With a few nutritious swaps I’ve created a homemade Cobb Salad that is just as satisfying as the restaurant version for less than half the calories. I devoured this for lunch and it was so filling that I couldn’t even finish it all. But I had an abnormally big breakfast today so please eat the whole thing. It’s totally guilt-free. 

Lightened Up Cobb Salad:

• 1 cup kale
• 1 cup baby spinach
• 1 hard boiled egg
• 1/4 avocado
• 1/4 cup chickpeas
• 2 slices turkey bacon, crispy
• 5 grape tomatoes
• 1/4 cucumber
• sprinkle of bleu cheese 

Homemade Tangy Ranch Dressing:

• 1/2 cup plain nonfat greek yogurt
• 1 tsp fresh dill
• 1/2 tsp fresh basil
• 6 Tbsp olive oil
• 2 Tbsp parmesan cheese
• 1 clove garlic 
• salt & pepper to taste

Directions: 

1. Boil egg, cook turkey bacon and chop up/prepare veggies.
2. Serve toppings over a bed of kale & baby spinach.
3. For the dressing, blend yogurt, spices and cheese in a blender.

Add olive oil to the blender and blend once again, until smooth and creamy. Pour dressing over salad – you definitely won’t need it all. Enjoy!

 

And thanks to my bestie, Emily for my healthy homemade salad dressing bottle! It even has healthy dressing recipes written on the bottle! Love it.

Have a great, healthy weekend guys! 

xo Hannah

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