Destroying Salad-Haters with Facts & Logic 

I think it might 😬

Ok I'll tip you when we're both 70

Shaq, it's like you were reading my mind with each point you brought up in the video. BTW, did you just low-key recommend people buy a SlapChop? :)

If this video with delicious salad dressings retracts a decade from my life expectancy, I expect you to donate me 9 dollars!!

Hey dude. You’re the best guy on RU-vid. I appreciate you for all your fast, witty and funny videos. You kill it

Pickled red onions for me are such a game changer. They work in so many dishes, and many salads

This ! It's better to eat 90% of a salad than avoid it entirely due to that 1 unwanted ingredient

Fact. Even for the dressing. It is better to est a nutritious and conplex salad with a heavy dressing than to eat a bowl of mac and cheese. Its about balance.

@@kingtoyou7806 shoutout to Ethan Whatsisname on youtube

Yep, thats what I do. I find lettuce just boring so I just don't use it often. One of my goto salads is: Couscous, Feta, Bell Peppers, Cherry/Grape/whatever small tomatoes, Cucumbers, onions, garbanzo beans, and whatever dressing I feel like using.

the benefits of growing up as a chubby little boy trying to stuff as much food into my mouth as possible are finally presenting themselves in the form of a salad video

I never had the proper term to express this feeling. I've always looked to eat foods with 'high food density' since it always felt more satisfying and filling to stuff my mouth and chew. Acknowledging this fact in the form of a term really helps me understand why salads feels so unsatisfying at times. Thanks as always shaq.

@@internetshaquille if you can find Mexican smoked salt. You won't be disappointed. It's 20$/ lbs . But a tiny amount changes a dish to different levels....

You can always use rice. Made a rice salad with Shaq's dressing and it was GOOD!

How the is this comment 14 hours old but the video says it’s 2 hours old my brain hurts

Fruitful you say :))) Speaking of which, fruit salads are awesome

Vegeteful you mean

@@khalil4030 Fun fact (if you don't think it's fun, I totally understand): the word "vegetable" originally meant "non-animal life", and by the 18th century was applied to any edible plants / roots / whatever.

How do you maintain or sharpen the blades in one of those? However useful they are to certain people, it makes me uncomfortable to see so many niche and seemingly consumable items mass produced. I would always choose quality and versatility over quantity with kitchen gadgets, but maybe I'm too able and too cynical to get it? Surely one could design a jig with a set of parallel blades that could be individually removed and sharpened, that would produce strips on the first cut, and could produce dice with a second cut?

@@armadillito I mean if the mandolin veggie slicer in the video is anything like mine, the blades should be removable and therefore able to both sharpen and replace without having to replace the WHOLE gadget

@@armadillito unfortunately these products have to be marketed for everyone and mass produced in order to be affordable to ppl with disabilities who are often in fixed income. There are certainly better ways of managing this but capitalism is as capitalism does.

Things like this are the exact reason i love this channel

What is an air filled food???

​@@zvezdoblyat salad leaves, obviously😅

Tbh, the structure puts me off, but i like that i can choose what to eat next. Seeing it and choosing it with my fork.

@@radschele1815 Same, I like having big chunks of stuff instead of tiny diced things in my salad, so I can really predict a whole mouthful. A lot of salad recipes sound delicious in theory but have sooo much texture with everything small. Those quinoa salads looked like a nightmare to me. 😅

What's the name? Would love to check it out myself.

Also would love the title! I can't grocery shop to save my life

@@oooomz7578 ​@BlackKat1112 The book is called Salad Freak by Jess Damuck.

What’s it called????

@@zoemartin1761 he just said “salad freak”

I totally agree! My hands are garbage, and it was nice to be acknowledged in a cooking video. :)

True! Usually when cooks acknowledge short-cut gadgets they say "You can use this...if you're LAME and PATHETIC" and it's like sir - my hands do not work.

Exactly. Every time a product comes out that shortens or simplifies a process, people love to immediately flame it and call people who use it "lazy" and it is so frustrating. It clearly isn't for them, yet they have no problem making content about how "redundant" or "stupid" the product is 🙄

@@Amarata67 exactly, I hate how people refer to as not being able to do prep work as lazy, when some of us can’t due to disorders and still really want to. I miss all of the things I could do so much

Yes! As someone with both joint pain and some mental stuff going on- I am 100% going to get a chopper gadget like that now. Any energy I can save through the day brings a massive reward.

They so good in terms of portioning as well. And they arent all that more epensive than buying the ingredients seperate.

@@mudawott absolutely. In my neck of the woods they're like $5 and make 1 big salad or 2ish side salads, and since I only have me to feed, it's a bargain.

+1. I buy two kits from Trader Joe’s with two avocados and that’s super cheap lunch for Monday-Thursday

@@elle1107 its currently the cheapest way to get lettuce here in Australia. It helps a lot with my veggie intake to just get a salad bag since i have awful executive functioning skills and they are usually tasty.

salad kits are usually disgusting though

At this point I know a video is worthless if there’s no pajamagirl comment on it. I can now rest knowing this post was blessed

@@internetshaquille You mentioned in this video that you have a 2 minute humus recipe, but I looked in your description and didn’t find a link there. Then I did a search for “Internet Shaquille humus,” and no humus recipe came up. Help? I have so many boxes of pita chips to eat, but am sick of the store bought kind. I want a good quick recipe, because I’m disabled with a terrible back, so I can’t stand in the kitchen too long cooking. P.S. The OP changed their name - no more “pajamagirl.” Haha

couldn't agree more. my dad has an avid love of cooking and suffered a stroke recently that has severely reduced his mobility. chopping gadgets have definitely helped him stay in the game and continue to enjoy cooking. i really respect when youtubers manage to think of people like my dad, thanks shaq.

Psh yeah cus they're taking a cut from Big Lettuce

which makes it kinda funny they hate eachother lol

Check out chef John over at food wishes if you want another one! All the dishes he does are super accessible and well explained (and he’s hilarious as a nice bonus)

I second food wishes as another RU-vid chef who provides actual meals that you can make in a reasonable amount of time and also taste good.

@@jordankolbert hate implies a level of care I doubt either really has about the other. They're just diametrically opposed in philosophy. Shaq makes short and to the point videos, Adam does his long historical deep dives.

Roasted vegetables - another use for an air fryer.

Ever dipped your hot buffalo wings in fat free Ranch and found it didn't help with the burning? Or ever get the munchies for something fatty after the meal? You need the fat.

thank you anna :)

My mom makes an even easier version: peel and thinly slice a cucumber, toss it with some salt, let it stand for a while so it releases the water, add vinegar, pepper and dill to taste. That's it. I've never heard of mizeria with tomatoes, though.

this sounds awesome, im gonna make it this week. thanks for sharing!

@@CatBloom42 I doubt it's really proper mizeria with tomatoes (more like sałatka z pomidorami i śmietaną kwaśną), but it's stylistically very similar, and growing up my mom would make them interchangeably. I've only had the vinegar only version a few times ever, mostly at other people's houses/restaurants (my mom wasn't a fan of vinegar, funny enough). Very tasty though with vinegar only, and it still works great for savoury dishes.

That sounds delicious!! I can't wait to try it! 😋

Looks like every household here has their own recipe :D What my mom always does, is : slicing cucumbers thinly on a mandoline, adding lots of salt, mixing well and massaging them a bit so that salt really gets into them, then putting them aside for at least few minutes to release some of this extra moisture, discarding that salty af juice. Adding sour cream or thick Greek-style yogurt, a sqeeze of lemon juice - done! No dill, cause it's already sprinkled on whole cooked potatoes ;) My boyfriend really surprised me, cause for him it was just obvious that mizeria contains chopped fresh white onion. He also prepares this version with chopped tomatoes, but he doesn't call it mizeria, just ''sałatka pomidorowa'', or ''pomidory w śmietanie''.

:,)

If it exists, it's because SOMEONE out there likes it. Different strokes for different folks.

@@JustinKoenigSilica wrong

I needed this comment! I keep buying stuff and then spacing it bc of ADHD. Thank you for your suggestions!

This is awesome!! Do you have anymore ADHD friendly recipes to share?!

My biggest tip is to figure out what you can still do when your brain is goo and then do that, even if it's not what seems like the "optimal" way. Like, I will often prefer to heat/cook things in the oven because I am better at responding to a timer than to the microwave's ding. Because of that, one of my fallbacks is a frittata since it can hold any in-season or leftover veggies you want, takes 20-30 minutes to cook, and I usually get several meals out of it. I got an immersion blender as a gift and that's turned me on to cold soups [I'm all about salmorejo lately but @acooknamedMatt has been putting out a ton of ideas I still want to try] this summer. Put them right into your old takeout containers, bonus is that it's visible so you'll be more likely to remember to eat them. Finally: bullshit meals. If you've got a big project or some other stressful period coming up and you know you'll probably forget to eat, stock up on whatever bullshit foods you know you'll actually shove in your face that are almost like a meal. For me, that's jerky, hummus, good crackers, and some sorta highly flavored juice like cranberry or pomegranate so I can flavor my water enough to stay hydrated. Also, I assume if you're in this comments section you've already looked at Shaquille's back catalogue, but his way of explaining things helped me with several dishes that previously were too daunting, so don't neglect them. :)

I really appreciate these tips! I am forever wanting to use the veggies and then inevitably look at them 2 weeks later. And there's no way I can manage to shop for groceries AND make the meal in the same evening.

If you have bits of dry ass chicken from 3 days ago just toss em in a salad

Personal recommendation: make a good steak, slice it thinly after letting it sit (a bit thicker than beef in Chinese takeout), then toss that with greens and something crunchy like bell pepper or onion, a little oil or dressing but not much so you don't lose the steak's flavor.

Shaq actually has a whole video about incorporating vegetables into your meals that touches on this a little bit. I've been trying to cut meats out of most of my meals, and I've found some success with recipes that use other ingredients as protein substitutes, especially if they have a consistency and density that's comparable to steak or chicken when prepared right. I realized that for the most part, the thing I REALLY missed about meals with meat was the sensation of a full stomach it gave me. I need a dish that will keep me from raiding the pantry for snacks for a good couple hours, minimum! I've been eating meals with garbanzo chickpeas in the place of diced chicken for a few months now, and those add a satisfying texture to a dish while also being very filling ingredients. Similarly, tofu has a really efficient distribution of proteins and vitamins that your stomach needs to trigger the "I feel full and satisfied" feeling in your brain, and giving it a consistency and taste similar to meats isn't particularly hard. I press the moisture out of blocks of it, cut them into cubes, sear them in a pan after coating with some corn starch, and toss em in a basic general tso's sauce with some sauteed broccoli, and it's incredible. By all means, continue eating meat, no judgement(I still have a burger when eating out with friends with no remorse), but if you ever want to try adding a few recipes to your usual rotation without it, there's a lot of good ideas and resources online that can help you wean off of it. I recommend it, it really helped expand my palette and got me interested in dishes I wouldn't have wanted to try before.

@@Smell-O-Vision-Citrus I’ll definitely do some research. I didn’t even realize that’s what I was missing. There’s a Thai place with amazing noodles right by my house. I’ll have to get tofu next time I go.

Did you mean inosinates?

big brain alert

thank you Mariah :)

This sounds even better, to me!

Another person had a pretty solid tip about growing stuff, but since thats more of a long term of investment here are some other options, though a lot will depend on what you like the taste of. - Making salads out of canned beans and similar nonperishables instead of greens (balanced out with cheap fresh vegetables like bell peppers, onions). - Collard greens, certain types of chard, and other less trendy greens usually sell in large bunches at Walmart and the like. - Local Asian grocery stores tend to have a larger selection of fresh vegetables much cheaper than supermarkets. - Cabbage is a cheap substitute for crunchy greens once you get the bitterness out (salt, squeeze, wait, wash). - You can get root vegetables like carrots, turnips, beets etc. and use a vegetable peeler to slice them thinly, then throw those down on a cutting board and chop them up. If they come with leaves attached, those are perfect substitutes for the spring mix.