Make Salads Faster and Healthier With These Amazing Hacks

Salads are colorful by nature, but to ensure you don't just keep eating the same old carrot-cucumber-lettuce combo, aiming to eat a rainbow will get more nutritional variety into your bowl. Choose a veggie, fruit, or whole grain from every color of the rainbow.

Adding chickpeas to your salad isn't exactly a life-shattering idea by any means, but adding marinated chickpeas just might change your life (or the way you make salads, anyway). These soft, yellow gems are bursting with so much bold, zesty flavor that you can forgo the salad dressing!

Adding whole grains like quinoa, brown rice, or millet to your salads not only adds fiber and protein, but also makes a green salad more filling. Cook up one cup of whole grains (I like to use veggie broth to add flavor), and divide the cooked, cool grains between five containers for the week.

If you like having a fresh salad every night but hate having to take out every single ingredient to wash and cut it, prep veggies ahead of time on Sunday night. Then all you have to do is reach for the containers and toss them in a bowl and your salad is done.

To save time having to make tomorrow's lunchtime salad every night, make all five salads you need for your workweek at once.

Whether you buy greens in bulk at the farmers market or in a large plastic container at the grocery store, to prevent your lettuce from wilting or getting soggy, divide and store it in platic bags. Be sure to blow into the bag before sealing it up.

You can also make and freeze whole grains ahead of time so you can easily grab and reheat half-cup servings to add to your salads whenever you want them.

Sesame ginger tofu on your salad sounds amazing, right? Marinate cubed tofu ahead of time in your fridge so it's ready to go.

Sometimes it's the texture of your salad that gets boring, so mix things up and make your veggies more fun and a-peel-ing (get it?!) by using a vegetable peeler to make ribbons instead of dicing them with a knife. Try it with carrots, cucumbers, or yellow squash.

Why make your own salad dressing when you can just buy a bottle at the store? Because nothing tastes quite as fresh and as flavorful as a dressing you make yourself. All you need is a blender and a few ingredients and you can make a big batch to store in the fridge. Try this strawberry balsamic vinaigrette or, if you like creamy dressings, try this avocado dressing.

No time to marinate chickpeas or tofu? Cook up a frozen veggie burger patty, break it into pieces, and add that to your salad for a boost in fiber, protein, flavor, and texture. Or take it a step further and make this veggie burrito bowl.

Soggy sunflower seeds or squishy whole wheat croutons are not the most appetizing salad topping, so use this little hack to keep dry ingredients dry. Place a square of parchment paper on top of the mason jar covering your veggies and greens, add your toppings, then secure the lid.

Hate that kale is so tough to chew? Soften its leathery texture with this little trick: add bite-size pieces of kale to a large bowl with some generous pinches of kosher salt. Use your fingers to rub the the salt into each piece of kale, tossing it at the same time. After a few minutes of this "spa treatment," your kale will turn a more vibrant shade of green and wilt slightly.