Avocado Caprese Salad with Balsamic Reduction

July 10, 2015

Avocado Caprese Salad with Balsamic Reduction




It’s easy to overeat during lunch time. You’ve been up since 6am, work is stressful, you’ve already eaten your daily intake of healthy snacks but you’re still starving.
And you know what? Everyone makes bad decisions when they’re starving.
Your mouth is watering, the stomach aches with hunger.
You walk into the Deli.
The options are endless.
Everything looks good.
Even things you normally don’t eat look good. Like Fried Chicken Sandwich or the Italian Meatball Sub with Double Provolone Cheese — you know, just to throw some examples out there.

Avocado




Your mouth starts watering even more. Your original plan to have a healthy lunch, like a salad, is long gone.
You spend an hour debating, picking up things, putting things back, you can’t make a decision, all the while you’re getting even hungrier.
After all that debate, you end up devouring a footlong sub and you don’t even know how that happened.
Seriously, how that happened?
What about the Kale Salad with Root Veggies and Antioxidant Vinaigrette you planned to eat?
Where is it?
The hell, you were S to the T to the ARVING.
Forget the salad.

Mozzarella Pearls




But there’s another scenario.
One that involves one of the greatest salads ever.
So delicious, so filling, so light, so very good for you.
Enters the Avocado Caprese Salad with Balsamic Reduction.
A very fancy name for a very simple salad.
A salad that comes together in minutes (balsamic reduction excluded) and that you can bring to work with you for lunch, so you don’t have to worry about going to the Deli and making poor choices. All the while saving money and eating a clean and nutritious meal.
Sounds cool, right?

Avocado Caprese Salad with Balsamic Reduction


And don’t worry, you can still make poor choices at 3am when you’re blind drunk and a greasy meatball sub is the right thing to gobble up. Because you know, nothing soaks up alcohol better than greasy food (like you need me to tell you that!)

Avocado Caprese Salad with Balsamic Reduction
                                                   Print this recipe!
Inspired by JoyfulHealthyEats

Ingredients
Serves 4

Balsamic Reduction

2 cups / 500 ml balsamic vinegar

Salad

4 cups / 6 oz. / 170 gr fresh spring mix salad
½ cup fresh mozzarella pearls (small balls), whole or halved
½ cup cherry tomatoes, whole or halved
1 avocado, peeled, pitted and sliced
2 large handfuls fresh basil, roughly chopped

2 tablespoons olive oil
Fine grain sea salt
Ground black pepper to taste

Directions

Balsamic Reduction

In a small saucepan, bring balsamic vinegar to a boil over medium-low heat.
Cook for about 20 to 30 minutes, partially covered, until balsamic vinegar has reduced to a thicker glaze.
Cool and store covered in the refrigerator.

Salad

In four small bowls (or one large bowl), divide the spring mix, basil avocado, cherry tomatoes, fresh basil, and fresh mozzarella pearls.
Drizzle olive oil over the top of the salad, followed by drizzle of balsamic reduction.
Sprinkle with sea salt and fresh ground black pepper. Serve immediately.

Nutrition facts

One serving yields 259 calories, 22 grams of fat, 5 grams of carbs, and 2 grams of protein.

25 comments:

  1. Ahh, I need to have this in my kitchen all the time so I can just whip it up! At this moment, all I have is tomatoes haha.

    coffeeslag

    COFFEESLAG Deal Of The Day

    ReplyDelete
  2. Simple, refreshing, and delicious! I would say, the perfect summer option too. Indeed, all year round. Okay, perhaps, in winter time - along with a sandwich and fried chicken! Ha-ha, just kidding!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Looks amazing Mike!

    ReplyDelete
  4. oh yes, i do concur. Greatest salad ever is so simple and full of healthy fats --> UM YES! gimme that cheese and avo!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I love that you said "concur", such a great word!

      Delete
  5. Well, you say tomatoes, I say tomahtoes, you blog on Caprese, I do too...

    :-)

    indeed, great minds blog alike! Love your version, we actually make a similar type but never used the balsamic reduction, we are usually in a hurry when we make this type of salad. I think our version is in a blog post called Avocado Three Ways, and it was a post composed by the husband....

    have a great weekend, Mike! Hope you go for a long, satisfying run. I am nurturing a piriformis injury for almost 3 months now, and it's simply not fun.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I went for a very long run and thought about you. I really hope you'll have a speedy recovery!

      Delete
  6. Hi Mike, love your balsamic glaze and the salad. Summer tomatoes are the best.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. OMG I love summer tomatoes, so sweet and delicious!

      Delete
  7. This looks so good! That mozzarella looks to die for. And honestly, avo was the ONE thing missing from caprese :) Love this, pinning!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Avocado is THE one thing missing from Caprese, such an awesome add-on!

      Delete
  8. I LOVE the caprese combo! I just posted a caprese dish, too. Well, I guess great minds think similar recipes, right? ;)

    ReplyDelete
  9. Dude, I am loving this combination of awesomeness! I'm with ya...hungry is the worst time ever to go to the grocery store or pick out what to eat. We're in Maryland this weekend, and I didn't eat my usual healthy breakfast this morning. So around 11am I went grazing and gobbled down like 14 cookies. Ok, maybe not 14. Probably closer to 16. Next time I come here, I'm bringing this caprese salad with me! #WolfpackDeliBoycott2015

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. You went grazing???? More like you went hunting, you're a wolf after all!

      Delete
  10. Looks delicious!

    …………………………….. http://MARTASFASHIONDIARY.com

    ReplyDelete
  11. I tend to make my own lunch as I agree that is so easy to overeat. And not only that, the nutritional values of most of the tempting stuff, are no good!!
    This salad is very good!!

    ReplyDelete
  12. I agree, lunch in the deli is often way too tempting to be good :)
    I usually make my own lunch at home and I don't mind at all.
    I like the sale, it is very good indeed!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Bringing lunch from home is a great way to save money and eat good and healthy food!

      Delete
  13. With a person like me, it's easy to over eat a hell of lot the whole day. I do like beautiful simple like this too, I promise:).
    The good thing is I pack lunch for all of us, that way it's easy and healthy. Thanks always for motivating to be healthy.
    xx

    ReplyDelete
  14. I've been putting balsamic reduction on everything lately, if you haven't tried it with white balsamic reduction I think you'd love it because it's great with really subtle flavors like watermelon. Anyways, my love of all things Caprese knows no bounds and I'm excited to try adding a little avocado in there too!

    ReplyDelete