This pesto chicken salad is a five-minute low carb lunch built from a can, scooped onto baby romaine instead of bread, at about 2 grams of net carbs. It is the salad I take to a picnic or the office, and it travels better than any sandwich.
I found this recipe for Pesto Chicken Salad on one of those days when I spent way too many hours on Pinterest. As I stated and/or ranted in the post A Crustless Life, there are too many recipes out there that have unneeded carbs. I love chicken salad, but who says we have to serve it between two slices of bread? I have come to love using baby romaine and butter lettuce. I use small lettuce leaves so I can enjoy every bite. This is a great recipe for taking on a picnic or for lunch at the office.
Pesto, from a can, on lettuce
The shortcut here is real food fast. A can of chicken, a spoon of pesto, and some mayonnaise come together in the time it takes to wash a few leaves. Pesto alla genovese, the Italian sauce of basil, pine nuts, garlic, parmesan, and olive oil, carries both the flavor and the fat, so you need nothing else. And the lettuce is the whole low-carb trick: small romaine or butter leaves make sturdy little scoops that hold up where bread was never needed in the first place.
Net carbs and the fat that fills you
At about 2 grams of net carbs a serving, this leaves your whole day open. If your chicken salad ever tastes dry, the fix is more fat, an extra spoon of mayo or pesto, which is also what keeps a salad from leaving you hungry an hour later. Canned chicken is already cooked, so this is purely a mixing job; just keep it chilled until you eat. It is one of the grab-and-go chicken lunches in my low carb salads guide, right next to my sun-dried tomato chicken salad.
Sources
USDA FoodData Central, nutrient references for chicken, pesto, pine nuts, and mayonnaise.
Sugarfreechic test kitchen, low-carb lunch notes.
