Turkey Club Pasta Salad Jars

Turkey Club Pasta Salad Jars are like the best of a turkey club, but in a transportable, on-the-go jar! A healthy meal prep to take to work or to the park!

Doesn't this salad look GOOD?

A turkey club in pasta form with salad in jars. It's like your deconstructed favorite sandwich got hearty and transportable in a hurry. Layer the ingredients for a tasty, healthy and veggie-loaded lunch. Or dinner.

Turkey Club Pasta Salad Ingredients

For the Creamy Dijon Vinaigrette

• ⅓ cup light mayonnaise
• ⅓ cup apple cider vinegar
• 3 Tbsp olive oil
• 2 Tbsp Dijon mustard
• 2 Tbsp water
• ½ tsp kosher salt
• ¼ tsp garlic powder
• ¼ tsp onion powder

For the Pasta Salad

• 8 ounces whole wheat rotini pasta cooked
• 1 cup red onion sliced
• 1 pint grape tomatoes halved
• 12 ounces thick cut dei turkey breast diced
• 4 ounces bacon cooked
• 1 cup shredded cheddar cheese
• 8 cups romaine lettuce chopped

How to Make Turkey Club Pasta Salad Jars

This healthy meal prep epitomizes minimum effort for maximum results. The most prep you're doing here involves cooking bacon (which you can do while the pasta cooks), and assembling the dressing. You can make the dressing a day ahead, or the pasta, or even the bacon. It's easy to break this meal prep down into smaller components if need be. All of that can be kept in the fridge until it's time to assemble.

Find some good quality deli turkey meat for this; most supermarkets do their own roasted turkey in the deli department so ask for a sample. It will taste the closest to the kind of turkey—i.e., turkey right off the bone—associated with a good turkey club sandwich. Or maybe this is just my diner-loving experience coming through (most diners will use real roasted turkey, not deli meat). Once you have everything prepped, it's just a matter of layering the ingredients in quart-sized glass jars and assembling them in the best order.

How to Store and Serve Turkey Club Pasta Salad Jars

Storing in the jars is perhaps the ultimate meal prep for salad. But you can also serve them in the jars if you want, by shaking everything up. However, this works best if you transport and/or store in the jars in the fridge for up to 3 or 4 days, and tumble out the ingredients and toss them in a large bowl. Serve with crusty bread, if desired, but this is a pretty complete meal as is!

Substitutions and Alterations

You can use gluten-free pasta if you like; we like chickpeas in this situation but use whatever you prefer.

Any kind of tomato will work but diced grape or cherry tomatoes fit the best in these jars.

Swap the romaine for iceberg (yeah, we said that) or even spinach or kale, but know that romaine is the heartiest of them all and will hold up best as a prep.

Use turkey bacon if desired.

Opt for roasted chicken, rotisserie chicken, or any kind of leftover chicken if you want, or leftover roasted turkey meat, if you have it!

We love the Dijon mustard here, but you can try something else such as Green Goddess or even Caesar; all will taste great. But mustard and turkey go really well together, and the mayo gives it the creaminess needed to hold it all together.

PRO TIP: You can make any salad recipe into a jarred recipe by layering the ingredients in a similar fashion, so that the heartiest ingredients go on the bottom closest to the salad dressing. Easy peasy!

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