Quick and Vibrant Nicoise Salad – Mediterranean Diet Recipe

This Nicoise Salad recipe takes the basic concept of the classic French salad and uses items that can be found in your pantry to create a zesty and crunchy, filling lunch that’s also budget friendly.

This Nicoise Salad is a recipe from our Mediterranean Diet Made Easy Cookbook. It’s so simple and only takes a few minutes to make thanks to the use of pantry staples like canned tuna, jarred artichoke hearts and canned olives. Add in some chopped lettuce, cucumber and a hardboiled egg and you’ve got yourself a delicious and quick lunch.

Check out more here about The Mediterranean Diet Made Easy Cookbook, including links on where to purchase and more recipe sneak peaks.

There is nothing worse than standing in front of fridge that’s full of “ingredients” and not knowing what to make for lunch. My husband is the worst at this. Our fridge will be chock full of food but he’ll claim there is “nothing to eat”.

That’s part of the reason why I’ll take a little bit of time on Sundays to meal prep some items for the week. Especially for lunch. Check out this post on Meal Prep Based on Time for some great tips on what to make whether you have 15 minutes, 30 minutes or an hour.

This salad makes a great weekday lunch recipe because it’s so easy to put together. It’s also extremely Mediterranean diet inspired because it incorporates –

• Lot of fresh veggies like lettuce, cucumber, artichoke hearts, and bell peppers
• Canned tuna helps you meet that recommendation of seafood 2 times a week
• heart healthy fats like olives and an olive oil based dressing
• It’s fiber filled, which means you’ll not only be full but you are helping with blood sugar control, reduced cholesterol and reduced blood pressure. All which makes for a very happy heart
• The dressing is vibrant and packed with flavor thanks to lemon, spices and garlic

Some tips for making this salad –

• prep the hardboiled eggs in advance for an even quicker lunch. We love these Instant Pot Hardboiled Eggs for meal prep each week.
• you can also make the dressing in advance and keep in the fridge. if you don’t feel like making the dressing yourself feel free to use an olive oil based vinaigrette from the store.
• Want to make it plant based…omit the tuna and replace with canned chickpeas or even hummus instead
• change up the ingredients based on what you have…canned salmon instead of tuna, use leftover roasted veggies in place of the bell peppers, don’t like olives…no problem maybe add some sun-dried tomatoes instead. You can completely make it your own

Let know if you make and enjoy this recipe, feedback is always welcome.

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Quick and Vibrant Nicoise Salad

This easy nicoise salad recipe comes from our Mediterranean Diet Made Easy Cookbook and uses pantry items to create a quick meal.

Course lunch

Cuisine Mediterranean

Keyword salad

Prep Time 10 minutes minutes

Cook Time 0 minutes minutes

Servings 1 large salad

Author Brynn McDowell, RDN at The Domestic Dietitian

Ingredients

Dressing

• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 5-6 anchovy filets, drained
• 2 tbsp fresh lemon juice
• 1/4 cup olive oil

Salad

• 2 cups romaine lettuce, roughly chopped
• 1/2 medium cucumber, sliced
• 1 hardboiled egg, cut in half
• 1/4 cup roasted red peppers, sliced
• 1 (2.7 oz) can tuna, drained
• 1/2 cup canned artichoke hearts, quartered
• 1/4 cup olives
• 1/4 cup cornichons

Instructions

Dressing

• In a food processor, combine the garlic, anchovy filets and lemon juice. Pulse until well chopped. Then, with the food processor running, slowly add the olive oil. Puree the dressing until well combined.

Salad

• Combine te lettuce, cucumber, egg, roasted red peppers, tuna, artichoke hearts, olives and cornichons onto a large plate or bowl.
• When ready to serve, pour the dressing over the top

Notes

Recipe from The Mediterranean Diet Made Easy cookbook

 

If you don’t want to make your own dressing, you can substitute with an olive oil based vinaigrette. 

 

You can also easily change up this recipe to make it your own. Sun-dried tomatoes are a great addition. Change out the tuna with canned salmon, smoked salmon or chickpeas if you are looking for a plant based option. 

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