Transform Any Bland Store-Bought Salad Into A Delicious Wrap
Things have gotten pretty crowded in the bagged and pre-made salad section of grocery stores these days, but no matter what the mix, salad can still be a little boring. Not only can a store-bought salad come off as bland, but it can also be tough to fill up on salad alone. If you've ever packed a salad for lunch, but later wished you'd just brought a sandwich, there's a way you can have a little bit of both next time. Enter, the salad wrap sandwich. That's right, just stuff your salad into a wrap.
Wraps, if you really think about it, are oftentimes simply salad-filled burritos. If you've ever had a chicken Caesar wrap, you already know that a sandwich-sized tortilla is all you need to turn any salad into a handheld meal. All you need is a crunchy mix of greens and veggies, a little protein to keep you satisfied so you don't get hungry later, dressing, and a tortilla wrap. You can use any type of salad mix and dressing you want, because as long as it's good as a salad, it's probably going to be good as a wrap, too — no fork required.
Use greens, or mayonnaise salads, or both
Making lunch takes time, and it's no fun eating the same thing all week if you meal prep on the weekend. Store-bought salads are easy and inexpensive, especially compared to buying lunch every day, but a lot of them are lacking in flavor and substance. Instead of thinking of store-bought salad as the finished product just waiting for dressing, consider them as more of an ingredient. A bag of spring mix or spinach, for example, can fill out lots of different wrap sandwiches all week with only a few minor ingredient additions. In fact, the nice thing about wraps is that all the same tricks you can use to jazz up a salad work just as well in a wrap. Try adding any combination of chicken or tofu, grains, grated cheese, beans, and nuts to your salad sandwich setup, toss it together with dressing, and then simply roll it up into a wrap.
You don't have to limit yourself to just traditional salad greens for your wraps, either. Store-made salads like egg, tuna, and chicken salad are also more satiating in a wrap. If you find that your mayonnaise-based salads are also a little bland, adding a couple of tablespoons of zippy vinaigrette or pickle juice will help. You can also combine some salad mix and a scoop of store-bought mayonnaise-based salad, or add a smear of store-bought hummus into a wrap for the best of both worlds.
Hit the salad and olive bar for supplies
The whole point of store-bought salad is to make life easier, so if you don't want to spend too much time cutting and preparing extra ingredients, there are solutions. If you have trail mix around, add a handful or two to a bowl of store-bought salad with the dressing before you toss everything together for your wrap sandwich. There are a ton of different store-made trail mixes that have all kinds of dried fruit and crunchy bits that will make a wrap sandwich more interesting.
You can also get all sorts of wrap sandwich fixings at the salad bar and olive bar. Most well-appointed supermarket salad bars will have cut-up tomatoes, cucumbers, shredded carrots, and other veggies, plus shredded chicken, salmon, and roasted tofu. You can find plenty of prepared salads like tuna, tabouleh, and noodles at the salad bar too, which would all taste great rolled up in a wrap, as well as mixes of marinated vegetables at the olive bar. In fact, you can fill up a box or two with scoops of wrap supplies at the grab-and-go bars and you won't have to chop a single veggie or touch a mixing bowl to tackle lunch prep.
So next time you're shopping in the salad section of the supermarket, be sure to toss a bag of tortillas in the cart too. You'll always have the perfect vehicle for salad wraps no matter what boring salad comes along during the week.