Easy Chicken Sausage Greek Salad

Welcome back to Mimi's Organic Eats. Today we're making chicken sausage greek salads. Now I'm one quarter greek and I grew up eating greek salad pretty much every single day of my childhood. So today I'm going to share one of my favorite easy weeknight dinners that I make all the time. This is turning my favorite greek salad from childhood into a main meal. So let me show you guys how to make it. So first we're going to make the homemade greek dressing. Now this only takes a few ingredients and it takes less than five minutes to mix up and it's so much better than buying store-bought dressing. When you make your own salad dressing at home you can avoid things like seed oils and soy and stabilizers that they put in salad dressing that can sit on store shelves. So first we're going to add in half a cup of extra virgin olive oil. Now you want to make sure you're using a high quality extra virgin olive oil. I really love Carapelli, really reasonably priced and I really am a huge fan of their olive oil. Next we're going to add in a quarter cup of balsamic vinegar. Next we're going to add in one tablespoon of lemon juice and you guys can use a fresh lemon or you can use lemon juice from a bottle, either works. Next we're going to add in two teaspoons of dried oregano, then one and a half teaspoons of salt, one teaspoon of pepper, and then we're doing a quarter teaspoon of garlic powder and onion powder. Now we're just going to whisk this together until everything is combined. Now we're going to set the dressing aside while we make the salad and I like to leave the whisk in here right now because this dressing can separate because there's no stabilizers, which is a good thing, but that way I can just whisk it up right before I dress the salad. And if you guys have leftover salad dressing, store it in a mason jar with a lid in the fridge. I like using a mason jar for this because that way you can shake it up easily before dressing your salad because it does separate. So I love making Greek salad because it really only takes a few simple ingredients and it is so flavorful. So this salad is really easy to scale for one or two or three, it really just depends on how many you need. So first we're going to start out with some romaine lettuce. You just want to chop this and we're going to add it into a bowl. Now it's time to cut our cucumber. My mom always cut them into just thin slices and into four little triangles from there. John John wants food but he doesn't like cucumbers. I bet he won't eat this. You want to try a cucumber? That's what I'm eating. You can have what I'm eating. Cucumber. He won't, he won't eat it. You want to say hi to everyone? Say hi. I need chicken. You need chicken. Okay, let's get you some chicken while I make salad. Now that our pug has quieted, at least for a minute, next we're going to add in some tomato. You guys can use any kind of tomato for this that you like. You can use roma tomatoes, you can use heirloom tomatoes, cherry, grape. I just have some cute little ones from my farm box so that's what we're using today. Next I'm going to add some red onion. So I love red onions so I always put a lot on mine but my husband doesn't like as much as I do so I do like half for him. So if you're not a huge fan of red onion, just do a little bit less but I feel like the red onion is a really important part of this Greek salad for flavor. So now it's time to crumble our feta on top of the salad. So my number one tip for buying feta is to always buy block feta. Never buy a crumbled feta. And you may think, well I'm just going to crumble it myself, why wouldn't I just buy crumbled feta? Here's why. When you buy crumbled feta, you get other ingredients such as stabilizers that are in there to keep the feta crumbled. And it seems really funny, right? Why would you put something in there to keep it crumbled when you could just crumble it yourself? So as my dad says, the true Greeks never buy crumbled feta, only block feta. And while my mom was the one making the salads, my dad is the one who's actually Greek and so my mom just listened to whatever he said. So we always just had block feta growing up and it's still what I buy today. So you guys can use any kind of block feta that you like. I usually use like a regular cow's milk block feta but today I have some Sierra Nevada Cheese Company goat's milk feta which I'm really excited to try out. You can do however much feta that you like. I always say the more the better. Feta is going to add like a salty flavor to the salad. It's going to make it so delicious. And of course we can't forget the Kalamata olives. This is a super important element to this salad. Do not skip it. Kalamata olives are Greek olives and they're not the same as black olives even though the color is black. They have a much more rich, buttery, and salty flavor and they are just so delicious. I would just eat these by the jar sitting on the counter when my mom was making these salads growing up. Now you can buy them with the pits or pitted. For this salad I really like to buy them pitted. I don't see any difference so it's really just a personal preference. I really like buying them pitted for this salad because it just makes them so easy. And now if you want to chop them you can totally do that or you can just do what I do and add them on whole. Either works. So now that the salads are made I like to cook the sausages. That way as soon as they're warm you can put them right over the top of the salad. So I'm using fully cooked organic spinach and feta chicken sausages. That makes this recipe so easy because they cook up so fast. The spinach and feta ones that I buy are from Applegate. If you can't find those then a chicken and apple one is going to be super similar and I also use those a lot too. So if you're cooking them in your air fryer you can just throw the sausages in whole and then slice them up afterwards. But if you're doing it in your skillet I like to slice the sausages first that way they're going to brown on all sides. Today I'm going to do it in the skillet. Once the sausages are warm then it's time to add them on top of the salad. Then you want to dress with the dressing. Now remember I said the salad dressing was going to separate before this was ready and it did. So you just want to give it a little whisk and then you're just going to spoon it over the salad. Now it's ready to serve. If you guys enjoyed this video be sure to drop a like and leave a comment below. 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