Cottage Cheese Chickpea Salad: High-Protein Easy Lunch

This cottage cheese and chickpea salad recipe is one of several recipes in a meal plan to prepare lunches for four days a week without cooking during the week. Half of the chickpeas in this recipe are mashed to thicken the chickpea and cottage cheese mixture. This recipe includes canned chickpeas. Chopped celery and red onion add texture to the cold salad.

Rinse and drain chickpeas well before mixing them into the salad. I suggest using small-curd cottage cheese made with whole milk for this recipe. The mixture will blend more smoothly with the mashed chickpeas, and lumps of cottage cheese are less likely to appear in the final dish. A fork will work to mash chickpeas, as will a potato masher.

If you overcook the vegetables, the salad will lack texture and won't pack well for lunch. Combine vegetables and dressing. Season with additional ingredients, if desired. Lemon juice and Dijon mustard provide contrasting flavors in the salad, and fresh dill provides additional flavor.

Cover and chill the salad for 30 minutes or more before serving. I often use the chilling time to make other lunch components and then portion out the salad after chilling to let the ingredients mix. The finished product should look uniform and contain noticeable chickpeas and other small vegetable pieces.