Baked Chicken Breast Over Mediterranean Style Arugula Salad

Another perfect lunch meal prep idea for you all to save and prep for a week of school or work. This one is going to make your classmates or colleagues very jealous. This second recipe I'd like to share with you is this Baked Chicken Breast Over Mediterranean Style Arugula Salad. This salad includes: arugula, chickpeas, cherry tomatoes, walnuts, radish, cucumber, pomegranate seeds, and baked chicken breast. Whether you make this for one lunch or decide to use it as meal prep inspo, it's going to be so delicious. If you want to meal prep this salad, I have provided a detailed explanation of how to perfectly meal prep this salad without it spoiling! Let's get started.

PSA if you are a vegan: PLEASE opt out of the chicken and add quinoa instead. That way you have protein from the chickpeas, quinoa, and hemp seeds.

Yields: 1

Prep time: 30 minutes

Total time: 50 minutes

This recipe is dairy free and gluten free.

---

Ingredients:

Handful of arugula

½ radish

2 tbsp pomegranate seeds

½ cup of canned chickpeas, drained & washed

1 cucumber

5 cherry tomatoes

Serving size of walnut halves

Hemp seeds

Extra virgin olive oil

Juice of ½ lemon

Salt, black pepper, and fresh mint

Chicken breast:

1 piece of chicken breast

Juice of ½ lemon

Extra virgin olive oil

Salt

Black pepper

Garlic powder to your liking or 1 garlic clove

---

Instructions:

How to Make This Salad:

1. First, preheat the oven to 375. We are going to bake the chicken breast.

2. Grab your chicken breast and make sure you have removed all of the fat from it. Place it in a bowl to marinate: squeeze on ½ lemon, 1 TSP-ish of olive oil, salt and black pepper to your liking, and 1 minced garlic clove. If you don't have fresh garlic, use 1 TSP of garlic powder. Mix well with your hands and allow it to sit until the oven has preheated.

3. For the salad: In a bowl, add in a handful of arugula (or more if you'd like). Have your radish and cucumber finely diced and add them into the bowl. Add in the pomegranate seeds, the walnut halves, and the chickpeas. Add in the half cut cherry tomatoes.

4. Now for the dressing: In a small bowl, pour in 1-2 TBSPs of olive oil, juice of ½ lemon, salt and black pepper to your liking (remember the chicken is seasoned so you don't want to add too much salt), and ½ TSP of dried mint. Mix well. Leave to the side.

5. The chicken breast is going to need at least 20 minutes in the oven. You can check to see if it's well cooked through by slicing a small piece of it to see if it's perfectly white in the middle. Once it is, take it out of the oven and allow it to cool for 5 minutes.

6. Now let's put it all together: Add the sliced chicken breast on top of the salad, sprinkle on ½ TSP of hemp seeds, and pour on the dressing. Mix the salad very well. Taste for salt or black pepper. Add if necessary. Enjoy!

How to Meal Prep This Salad:

1. First, grab 5 Tupperware.

2. Have the oven preheated to 375. Repeat steps 2 & 5 from the previous section but with 5 chicken breasts.

a. For 5 pieces of chicken, you're going to need 1/4 cup of extra virgin olive oil, 1 full lemon, 4 minced garlic cloves, and salt and ground black pepper to your liking.

b. Allow them to marinate and then bake them in the oven until they are well cooked through.

3. As you're waiting on the chicken breasts, in a large bowl, you're going to add in 3-4 handfuls of arugula.

4. Chop up 15-20 cherry tomatoes in halves and add them into the bowl.

5. Have 1-1/2 radishes and 2-3 cucumbers finely diced and add them into the bowl. Add in 1/4 cup of pomegranate seeds, 2-3 servings of the walnut halves, and the 1 entire can of chickpeas.

6. Now for the dressing: You are going to repeat step 4 from the previous section.

a. The difference is that I want you to have very small Tupperware that can hold individual dressings.

b. When you meal prep a salad, you don't want to pour on the dressing beforehand because then over the course of the week, the salad will get soggy. So, you want to prepare each salad's dressing and place them in their own separate containers.

c. I have provided an example of these tiny glass containers and the link to buy them off of Amazon.

7. Mix the salad well and evenly distribute the salad into each large Tupperware.

8. Once the chicken breasts are done, slice them into thin pieces and add them into each Tupperware.

a. If your Tupperware has separate compartments you can place the chicken breast in the smaller one and the salad into the larger compartment.

9. Evenly sprinkle on ½ TSP of hemp seeds onto each salad.

10. What I recommend doing to make sure the salads don't spoil over the course of the week (they won't, but precautions are good to take) is to cover each salad with a paper towel and then add the lid on. No need to reheat this since it's just a salad! Enjoy all week!

I hope you love this recipe as much as I did, so if you do, please leave me a comment and/or give this recipe a rating! I always read through my suggestions and comments, so please let me know your thoughts. If you have any questions you can feel free to DM me here or through Instagram. Speaking of Instagram - please tag me in all of your creations! I love seeing how the recipes come out and seeing how talented you all are. Sending my love.

xoxo,

Jasmin D the RD