Meal of the Month: A Simple & Tasty Mackerel Salad

Since I have been eating a lot healthier over the last few months I have been trying out new food ideas and trying to make things that are simple to make whilst being tasty to eat. This brings me to a ‘mackerel salad’ that I have been making very regularly and this is how I have been doing it.

I use smoked mackerel that I have been buying for around 84p per 100g and each 100g portion contains 293kcal, 18.3 grams of healthy fats, 20g of stomach filling protein and the omega-3 fats help reduce cholesterol and also act as an anti-inflammatory. I’ll then cut up my fish into small slices using some kitchen scissors and put it all in a plastic container.

Next I very finely slice all my salad and I usually use crunchy lettuce, cucumber, cherry tomatoes, spring onion, and red pepper. These veggies give you some amazing health benefits, the lettuce aids digestion and promotes liver health, the red pepper is rich in antioxidant vitamins such as A, C and K and the cherry tomatoes also contain antioxidants. A few sliced springs onions have a high sulfur content that can help lower blood pressure and the cucumber slices have a good level of potassium and manganese, which helps promote nutrient function.

I find slicing it all very finely makes the salad taste so much better and integrates all the flavours of the vegetables rather than having big lumps of cucumber or lettuce to chew on. You will be getting a few grams of carbs from your salad and don’t worry to much about the portion size as the calories are low per portion.

I will then put all the salad in with the fish in the plastic container and mix it all up, then let it sit in the fridge for a bit until your ready to eat. This is to let all the healthy fish oils from the fish dress the salad saving on extra calories from a salad dressing.

I have been tending to have this as my evening meal and really enjoy it and at less than 400kcal it can’t be bad can it. Also you can use different oily fish so you can vary your food from week to week to keep things interesting.