Simple Non-Veg Salads 1001

Non Veg Salads ? A Primer:  A mix of ready to eat meats / sea food  with fresh veggies make easy, protein packed, filling salads. Almost any cured, ready to eat meat/ sea food can go into a salad. With a few simple rules, you can easily create delicious salads.

1. Check packaging to ensure that the base is ready to eat. 

2. Shake off excess water after washing fruits / veggies to avoid watering down your salad. Use a tissue to soak excess water.

3. Mix in the dressing just before serving as dressing makes salads soggy after a while.

4. If you plan to store the salad, do so without dressing.

5. Cut  veggies/ meats into uniform, bite sized pieces.

6. Always tear leaves, as cutting them would cause them to wilt.

7.  Avoid over stirring the salad, which makes it soggy. Instead add everything to a closed container and toss well to mix.
8.  Hollowed out fruit / vegetable halves / bowl shaped cabbage leaves  make great salad serving bowls .Palm sized cabbage leaves / grape    leaves make cute spoons.

Salad dressings with oil, however can have almost   100 calories per spoon. For low cal salads, choose dressings like lemon juice / yogurt / vinegar and replace the nuts with croutons as a garnish.

Classic Dressing: Soy sauce, oils, vinegar have been used as dressings for thousands of years. Creamy emulsions like vinaigrette & Mayonnaise are some of the more popular dressings.

 Full meal Salads:
When you add the following to any of the salads above, the salad becomes a full meal.

1. Half a handful of cheese (paneer, feta etc) : Cheese Salad.
2. Half a handful of cooked rice or half a handful of cracked wheat (Bulgur wheat) soaked in boiling water for 10 minutes. : Grain Salad.
3. A handful of cooked couscous / pasta   : Pasta/ Couscous Salad.
4. Half a handful of chopped and boiled potato: Potato Salad.
5. Half a handful of chopped bread: Bread Salad.

Always check packing to ensure the base is ready to eat.

Sausage : Ground meat mixed with fat, flavouring, usually shaped into cylinders. Pork is most common, but beef, lamb, veal (calf meat), goat, turkey, chicken or game meats are also used. Corn starch, whey, Oatmeal or rice flour are also mixed in as fillers. Many sausages are cured / precooked and are ready to eat. Hundreds of sausage varieties exist. Sausages were invented as a way to preserve meat without refrigeration.

Corned beef : Beef cured with salt and is ready to eat. (Corn refers to the grainy salt crystals used for curing. Corned beef is mixed with pepper and smoked to produce Pastrami.

Prosciutto : Salted, air dried ham (dried for up to two years). It is ready to eat and is usually sliced into wafer thin pieces.

Salami ? Fermented and air dried sausage.
Kippered Herring - Gutted, salted and smoked herring.