I finally jumped on the bandwagon! Salad prepping using mason jars has made my life so much easier. I should have been using this technique long ago. Serious, all over the internet I would see people raving about how much they loved using the jars for their salads. I literally told myself for a year to try it out, but I never did. Figures…

One Saturday morning I was running errands before a big snow storm was to hit down on Baltimore. I was at my favorite store, Target, (SN: I have to learn how to stick to a list in that store… I never stay on track) to purchase a few items we may have needed. As usual not staying to my list, just wandering around Target and I came across a case of 9 wide mouth mason jars that were on sale for about $9. I just HAD to buy them. I thought this would be the perfect opportunity to try out salad prepping using jars.

I was so tickled about my mason jar find, that I rushed home to get started. As soon as walked through the door, I grabbed my iPad and perused different bloggers post about mason jar salad prepping. I pulled different tips from each blogger that seemed important. I removed all the ingredients from my refrigerator that I thought would taste yummy in a salad and laid them on the counter.

Ingredients from my refrigerator.

These are the ingredients I used, but add whatever you want to your salads!

Since this would be my first attempt at prepping salads using mason jars, so I only wanted to prep three or four just incase I didn’t like the results. I pretty much followed what the picture below will tell you to do.

Here are a few pictures I snapped while prepping my salads that day.

Cutting the vegetables I planned to use in the salads.

Decided to use spicy mango lunch meat to give my salads a little bit more flavor!

While I chopped the vegetables, I boiled whole grain pasta to add to the salad. (Multi-Tasking lol)

I placed my hardy veggies first.

Final Product

Best Tips I can give you from my experience:

1.) Put whatever you want in your salad, but I would suggest that the ingredients that will follow the salad dressing be hardy. Basically think about what type of vegetables are best pickled. Example: I only use small cherry tomatoes (whole) in my salad. They old up well and taste lovely after sitting in dressing for a few days.  Also, cucumbers and carrots will give you a tasty result.

2.) I use to prep my salads and store them in plastic containers. The salads would never stay fresh for longer than two or three days. Although with a mason jar I found that when I went to eat my prepped salad on the 6th day, it taste just as fresh as the prepped salad from the 1st day. I will never go back to using plastic containers! I think the freshness is preserved because of the seal you get with a jar.

3.) I suggest only using oil based dressings in the jars. The creamy dressings obviously are great but its much harder to get it out of the jar once you are ready to eat your salad. If you want a creamy dressing, wait to put the dressing on the salad once you are ready to eat it.

4.) Have fun with this project. Experiment with different ingredients and share with friends, family, and co-workers.

I thought I would be prepping these salads for myself but they are a hit in my home. My boyfriend loves them! We’ve actually split these salads for a late night snack. The prepped salads have saved us from ordering pizza on numerous occasions, which is totally the point!!

Until Next Time,

xoxo

Alysha

@discovercharmcity