Top Your Next Dinner with This Salsa Chimichurri Recipe (Paleo Recipe)

I know personally how hard it can be to stick to a healthy diet. I’m up early every morning to train clients at my personal training gym in Carlsbad. I get home late, too. Sometimes I’m working with a personal training clients until late at night. Sometimes I’m running my kids around North County. Sometimes I’m doing jiu-jitsu or my own strength training workouts.

Whatever it is, there’s nothing worse than coming home at the end of a long day and realizing that you now have to spend an hour preparing dinner. In those moments, it’s easy to rely on fast food or just grab a microwave dinner from the freezer.

The great things about my Paleo recipes is that they usually require very little preparation but deliver maximum flavor for your taste buds. That’s especially true of salsa chimichurri, which also happens to be a Paleo recipe.

Salsa chimichurri is a condiment used in Argentina to flavor grilled meats. A healthy spoonful of this herb-based sauce will brighten up anything from meat to vegetables. I like to make mine with cilantro for added flavor.

If you’re short for time during the week, one of the best ways to still get healthy food on the table is to prep some Paleo recipes like this salsa chimichurri over the weekend. I like to grill up enough lean meat for most of the week. Then I will whip up a few sauces like this one. All I have to do on weeknights is heat up the meat, steam saute or roast some veggies, and add a sauce. In a matter of minutes, you have a healthy meal that tastes amazing while still helping you meet your weight loss or other fitness goals.

This is the approach Melissa Joulwan takes in her Well Fed Paleo cookbooks. I love this series of Paleo cookbooks because she includes a lot of more in-depth recipes for those days when you have time to spend in the kitchen, but she also includes a lot of simple, basic recipes that are good for any day of the week. Check out the Sunshine Sauce and Olive Oil Mayonnaise recipes in her first Paleo cookbook for some additional sauce ideas.

Melissa also recommends steam sauteing vegetables at the beginning of the week, which makes weeknight prep even simpler. To do this, cut up your vegetables (florets for broccoli, slices for bell pepper, etc.) and then rinse them under water. Add the wet vegetables to a preheated skillet, cover, and cook until almost tender (and bright green in the case of vegetables like broccoli). Store the partially-cooked vegetables in the refrigerator. On the day you want to cook them, heat some healthy oil in a skillet, add the vegetables, and saute until the vegetables are cooked through. You can add seasonings to taste. I like the different spice blends from Savory Spice for complex flavors that take no time at all.

With Paleo diet hacks like this, it becomes a lot easier to eat healthy, even when your schedule feels overwhelming.

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PALEO RECIPE FOR SALSA CHIMICHURRI

Ingredients:

.5 cup fresh flat-leaf parsley, tightly packed (about 1 bunch of parsley)

1.5 cup fresh cilantro, tightly packed (about 1 bunch of cilantro)

1/4 cup diced shallots

1/4 cup fresh oregano

1 heaping tbsp of minced garlic

2 tablespoons red wine vinegar

1/4 cup to 1/3 cup olive oil (it depends how thick you like it)

¼ tsp salt or to taste

Optional:

¼ tsp red pepper flakes, or to taste

Directions:

Add all the ingredients to a food processor and pulse a few times until chopped. Slowly stream in the olive oil, adding more if needed to obtain the desired thickness, while pulsing the mixture a few more times until the olive oil is combined. Make sure to scrape down the sides of the food processor. Taste and add more salt if needed.

Use your salsa chimichurri as a condiment for meats, vegetables, savory carbohydrates, and salads. It's ready to serve right away or you can refrigerate in a sealed container for up to 4 days.