Autumn Salad with Strawberry Balsamic Dressing

Need another Trim Healthy Mama E salad in your life? Try this one!

In a recent poll I did on Instagram, you all told me you wanted more Trim Healthy Mama E recipes. This salad is so delicious you will totally forget it is low fat!

With crispy air fried turkey bacon, succulent chicken, juicy pears and a tangy strawberry balsamic dressing, this is one tasty recipe.

I love my air fryer!

You know how sometimes you buy something you think you will love and then end up hardly ever using it? Or does that just happen to me?

Well, my air fryer was definitely not one of those things! It is an amazingly handy appliance to have. Especially if you follow the Trim Healthy Mama plan. On THM E meals the fats are kept low. So an air fryer is a fantastic way to get food that tastes like it has been fried in oil while actually using little to no oil at all!

Some of my favorite things to cook in it so far are sweet potatoes, mushrooms, okra, fish, chicken, and chickpeas. The fish is the ultimate fast food meal! You can throw a frozen fillet in there and have it cooked and crispy in 10-15 minutes.

In this recipe, I use the air fryer to cook the chicken breast and turkey bacon. The chicken gets a beautiful golden skin that adds so much flavor. And the turkey bacon gets CRISPY! I love crispy bacon, and turkey bacon is harder to crisp. This isn’t an issue with an air fryer!

What if I don’t have an air fryer?

No air fryer? No worries! You can cook the chicken and bacon any way you want. The main thing is to have it cooked for the salad, it doesn’t matter how you do it. You could fry them in a skillet or bake in the oven. Just be sure you are using minimal oil if you want to keep this an E meal.

[Read more about E meals in this post: Trim Healthy Mama Meal Types Explained.]

The dressing for this salad is a fuel pull!

I first got into berry salad dressings after trying the Slim Belly Jelly dressing recipe in the Trim Healthy Mama cookbook. I was quite surprised how good it was!

A strawberry dressing is the perfect option for pairing with an autumn pear and chicken salad. This recipe is sweet and tangy with a slight savory kick from Dijon mustard, onion powder and soy sauce. It also get a little texture from poppy seeds.

This dressing is a fuel pull so it can be paired with any Trim Healthy Mama meal. In fact, you could omit the pears in this recipe and you would have a complete fuel pull salad.

Let’s talk about the cheese

I love topping this salad with a tiny bit of soft goat cheese. Goat cheese is a little stronger and bold, so it contrasts the sweet and mellow pear perfectly.

Check your nutrition label to make sure you don’t go over the fat limit for an E meal, which is 5 grams. I used about a scant tablespoon and broke it into tiny little chunks to spread the flavor around.

You could also substitute the goat cheese with a sprinkle of feta.

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How to make this salad

Ingredients:

For the salad dressing:

2 cups frozen strawberries

1 cup water

2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar

2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar

1 teaspoon Dijon mustard

1/4 teaspoon onion powder

1/4 teaspoon black pepper

1 teaspoon soy sauce

4 pinches sea salt

2 tablespoons baobab powder

1/4 teaspoon sunflower lecithin, optional

3 tablespoon xylitol

1 doonk THM pure stevia

1 doonk glucomannan powder

1 tablespoon poppy seeds

For the salad:

Cooked chicken breast

Cooked turkey bacon

Spinach and/or butter lettuce

Sliced mushrooms

Sliced red onions

Sliced pears

Goat cheese or feta

Instructions:

For the dressing:

1. Bring the strawberries and water to a boil, simmer until the berries are tender.
2. Place in a blender with all the other ingredients except the poppy seeds. Blend until smooth and then pour into a jar and stir in the poppy seeds. Let cool before storing in the fridge.

For the salad:

1. To cook the chicken, air fry thawed chicken breasts at 400 degrees Fahrenheit for 15 minutes. Flip them over and cook another 5 minutes or until cooked through.
2. To cook the turkey bacon, air fry at 400 degrees for 5 minutes. Flip and cook another 6-7 minutes.
3. To assemble the salads, layer spinach and/or lettuce on a plate. Top with the sliced mushrooms, red onion, pears, sliced warm chicken and crumbed turkey bacon. Drizzle on the strawberry dressing and crumble on goat cheese or feta. Enjoy! I always like to do a grind each of salt and pepper on top as well, to make all the flavors pop.

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