Healthy and Easy Thai Chopped Salad with Peanut Sauce

Healthy Thai Chopped Salad with Peanut Sauce

Thai Chopped Salad

As of this post it is blazing hot in the crazy humid city of Houston, Texas and our AC isn't able to keep up.  We have done almost everything you can do that's fun in the city and are cranky so we decided to try our friend's apartment's AC and agreed to cook if they would let us in.  This Salad was consumed completely before I could get there by the next morning when I invited myself over to make sure the left overs didn't go to waste.  This is the perfect summer crowd pleaser and it's easy to make and even my vegetarian friends can eat it and still get protein from it and you hopefully get the benefit of good chemistry amongst friends to help ease the dog days of summer or hell, just the pains of life.

This dish can be used as a main course or a side depending on your crowd.

Ingredients:

Summer Thai Salad Ingredients

• 2 small to medium small cucumbers with seeds scooped out and cut into c shaped slices

• 

  Preparing a cucumber for Thai salad

• 2 red or colorful bell peppers cut to bite sized
• 1 8 oz of shredded fresh carrots
• 2-3 cups of edamame shelled and cooked
• ¾ bottle of Thai peanut sauce or to taste
• 2 cups thin sliced green onion
• 2 cups sliced cilantro
• 1 Head of red cabbage
• 2 Medium avocados

Directions:

This is super easy;

1. Just chop everything up that you don't buy chopped up already and cook the edamame if it doesn't come precooked.
2. Combine everything except the sauce and avocado in a large salad bowl and mix with a large spoon.
3. If you are like me and agree that avocados make most everything better you can mix them in too or just put them sliced on the side as they do change the crunchy texture and not everyone likes them so much.
4. Stir in the peanut sauce tasting occasionally to taste just before you serve it so that it does not soak up the sauce too much and loose it's crunch.
5. Place them on a table separated with the added possibility of some crunchy whole grain rice or whole grain salad sticks if you can find them, I haven't been able to and I don't use refined flour if I can avoid it.
6. The other option is to serve on a plate and just put the sliced avocado on the side like the image below.  Serve cold and add sliced grilled chicken or your preferred protein of choice if you want more protein.

Thai Chopped Salad