Top 5 Zone Salads

Salads look like the easiest choice on the Zone: fresh, light and full of vegetables. The catch is that most classic salads are just vegetables and olive oil. That means carbs and fat, but almost no protein. And on the Zone, every meal combines all three.

So for each of the five salads below, you'll also find what to pair it with to make it a complete meal.

1. Shopska Salad

The classic you can't do without. The Shopska Salad, Bulgaria's signature salad of tomatoes, cucumbers, onion and olives, is made here with low-fat sirene (a Bulgarian white brined cheese), which also adds some of the protein. It's ready in ten minutes. To make it a full meal, add more protein, such as grilled chicken or hard-boiled eggs.

2. Tomato Salad

The fastest of them all, at five minutes. The Tomato Salad with cucumbers, bell pepper, onion and olive oil covers your carbs and fat, but has no protein. It's a perfect side for fish, chicken or turkey.

3. Green Salad

Light and crunchy: romaine, green onions, radishes and cucumber. In the Green Salad recipe, the radishes are briefly marinated in salt and vinegar, which mellows their flavor. It's low in carbs, so treat it as a side to a protein main dish rather than a meal on its own.

4. Tabbouleh Salad

This Middle Eastern classic is adapted for the Zone with quinoa instead of bulgur. The Tabbouleh Salad with tomatoes, parsley, shallots, olive oil and lemon is ready in about twenty minutes. The quinoa provides most of the carbs, so add protein: chicken, white fish or shrimp.

5. Zucchini and Eggplant Salad

The heartiest of the five. The Zucchini and Eggplant Salad combines grilled vegetables with a cream of skyr, cream cheese, garlic and dill, plus sirene. The skyr and cheese add a good amount of protein, so this one comes closest to a standalone meal. It takes longer, about 50 minutes, which makes it a good weekend recipe.

How to turn a salad into a Zone meal

The rule is simple: vegetables usually cover the carbs, while olive oil and olives cover the fat. All that's left is to add protein to complete the balance. Good options include:

• grilled chicken breast or turkey breast
• fish, or tuna canned in water
• hard-boiled eggs or egg whites
• low-fat cheese or quark

In ZoneIt, the blocks for each of these recipes are already calculated. Add the salad and the protein to your Diary and you'll see right away whether the meal is balanced.