Quick Summer Salad with "Homemade" Croutons
Grocery stores ought to have an aisle labeled “Truly Scary Food-Like Substances.” That aisle would contain low-fat flavored yogurt (the majority of which contains a host of unpronounceable sugars and fillers), low-fat salad dressings (ditto), breakfast cereals (up to 40% sugar), breadcrumbs (the ingredient list is the entire length of the can!), and croutons (more often than not, stripped-out white bread coated with a collection of chemicals).
The good news is that you can easily make your own dressings, cereals, breadcrumbs, and croutons, and you can purchase whole-milk plain yogurt that you can flavor yourself (stir in strawberries and honey one day, top with homemade granola and maple syrup the next).
As far as croutons go, you can cut stale whole-grain bread into cubes and then toss them with extra-virgin olive oil, dried herbs, and/or grated Parmesan. Bake/toast the croutons for a few minutes to make them crispy and brown. And here’s a bonus idea: you can grind the rest of the stale bread into crumbs with a food processor and then freeze it in glass jars to use whenever you need fresh breadcrumbs.
Then again, if you’re looking for a super-simple crouton — and one that happens to be gluten-free — you can just break apart organic tortilla chips and/or veggie chips. After all, when you’re going for croutons, you’re going for crunch, right? Sometimes the texture/mouthfeel is the most important aspect of a food…and tortilla chips are plenty crunchy!
For this salad, I topped chopped tomatoes, chopped green beans (simmered for 5 minutes and drained), and chopped rapini (added them to the beans for the final 3 minutes of simmering) with some multi-seed organic tortilla chips I found at Trader Joe’s. The fact that the chips featured poppy seeds, chia seeds, and hemp seeds added a wonderful nuttiness to the salad. The dressing was a simple 2:1 ratio of extra-virgin olive oil to balsamic vinegar.
You could use your “homemade” croutons to top any kind of salad, from simple summer salads to classic Caesars. Just be sure to choose organic chips that are made with expeller- or cold-pressed oils. Much healthier (and tastier) than anything you’ll find in the Truly Scary aisle!
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Tags: croutons, gluten-free, salads
