It’s a new day with a new way of sandwiches. More nutritious and creative, lettuce wraps can be a great substitute for cutting the calories, carbs, and sodium in bread.
Choose firm vegetables for best results when storing and packaging ingredients such as creamy chicken or turkey salad. Vegetable options such as bibb, romaine, or little gem lettuce work well. Some whole-leaf lettuce will also work when packing or preserving ingredients.
Six ways to achieve lettuce wrap success.
1. Pick Your Protein: Leftover chicken works just as well if you don’t have a cooked turkey, as mentioned in our Turkey Salad Wraps recipe. And if you love tofu, leftovers with this healthy protein can work in a wrap too.
Are you still looking for a quick protein? Open a few cans of tuna, drain, rinse, and add to the salad ingredients.
2. Customize Your Sauce: Typical salads contain fat and calories from the sauce. In our recipe, we reduced fat and calories and added a few nutrients, such as protein and calcium, by using low-fat mayonnaise and low-fat Greek yogurt.
3. Add Veggies: Our recipe calls for celery and onion, but feel free to add more. Chop up cucumbers, red peppers, or carrots for extra crunch, flavor, and nutrition.
4. Add Fruit: We added dried cranberries to our recipe, but if you don’t have cranberries in your cupboard, you can use raisins, sliced strawberries, halved grapes, or chopped apples.
5. Try Texture: For crunch, we used walnuts, but any nut or seed works well, too. Try roasting them for extra flavor. Here’s a quick “toast” trick: Place the nuts or seeds on a plate and microwave them, 30 seconds at a time, until evenly toasted.
6. Replacement Wraps: If you’re out of lettuce or other large-leafed vegetables, consider putting the turkey salad in half a scooped-out bell pepper.
MORE RECIPES: The Last Caesar Salad Recipe You’ll Ever Need
The secret of these wraps is the variety of textures and flavors. Our lettuce wraps can stay fresh and travel to provide a satisfying lunch at work or school. Put them in a lidded jar and keep them cold until served. And while you enjoy your lunch, you can relax knowing you’ve packed plenty of nutrients into a single meal.
Turkey salad wrap recipe
Makes: 4 servings (2 wraps each) / Prep Time: 15 minutes / Total Time: 15 minutes
2 ½ cups cooked turkey, shredded
¼ cup dried reduced sugar cranberries
¼ cup walnuts, chopped
½ cup celery, finely chopped
Two tablespoons red onion, chopped
¼ cup low-fat mayonnaise
½ cup plain, fat-free Greek yogurt
¼ teaspoon white pepper
Eight full leaves of bibb or romaine lettuce
Mix turkey, cranberries, walnuts, celery, red onion, mayonnaise, Greek yogurt, and white pepper in a medium bowl. Divide the mixture among eight lettuce leaves and wrap. If you don’t eat the wraps right away, put them in a container with a lid and put them in the fridge. Use within a few hours. You can also keep the salad separately until you start making the wraps.
By Henry Ford Livewell.
Two hundred ninety calories (41% from fat), 14 grams fat (2.5 grams saturated fat), 10 grams carbohydrate, 30 grams protein, 200 mg sodium, 70 mg cholesterol, 24 mg calcium, and 1 gram fiber. Food Exchanges: ½ fruit, four proteins.
Bethany Thayer is a registered dietitian and nutritionist with Henry Ford Health. For more recipes and health information, visit henryford.com/blog. For questions about today’s recipe, email [email protected].
