Unless you’ve been hiding under an extremely thick doona, you’ll no doubt have heard about the tale of Jennifer Aniston’s famous chickpea salad. You know, the one where she ate it every day for 10 years while filming Friends?
The tasty salad concoction consisted mainly of bulgur, chickpeas parsley, mint, diced cucumbers, red onion, chopped pistachios and feta cheese. It was first revealed by Aniston’s co-star Courtney Cox back in 2010 who described it as a “doctored up cobb salad”.
Its contents have been recreated thousands of times on social media, and its beloved by many who have also adopted the recipe as a frequent go-to. But it turns out, we’ve all been living a lie.
Aniston herself has now come out to say that she never ate this particular salad every day, telling ELLE US that she “would never have that much chickpea in a salad” and that it’s “not good for the digestive tract”.
In a subsequent interview with Shape, Aniston apologised for the widespread shock this admission received, “I’m sorry, I feel like I’m disappointing everybody, but that’s not my salad. It looks delicious, but it’s not the salad that I had on Friends.”
But Cox wasn’t lying when she said her co-star ate the same thing every day—Aniston has revealed the ingredients of her real go-to, and lucky for us, it still sounds extremely delicious.
How to make Jennifer Aniston’s famous salad
The ingredients you’ll need are:
- Shredded lettuce
- Egg whites
- Chicken
- Bacon
- A handful of garbanzo beans
- A basic vinaigrette.
Once you’ve cooked the chicken, bacon and garbanzo beans (the legumes can be cooked to your liking), simply throw the lot together in a bowl and feel that Rachel Green energy.
Aniston also revealed that she sometimes incorporated pecorino cheese sourced from a nearby Italian restaurant just to set the whole thing off.
Yes, it really is that simple—though Aniston reiterated that she didn’t always have the salad for lunch every day.
“Focus on really being good to yourself but also allow yourself the moments of indulgence,” she added.
