High Protein Lentil and Feta Herb Salad

Quick answer: This vegetarian salad has 34 grams of protein and 19 grams of fiber per serving, at 564 calories. Lentils dressed while warm, with feta, Greek yogurt, cucumber, tomatoes and an aggressive amount of parsley and mint. It takes about 25 minutes and serves 2. The fiber figure is roughly two-thirds of a day’s recommended intake — the highest of any recipe on this site.

Everyone building a high protein meal thinks about protein. Almost nobody thinks about fiber, which is the other half of why a meal keeps you full, and which most people fall well short of.

This salad happens to deliver both. Two cups of cooked lentils per serving supply 18 grams of protein and 16 grams of fiber on their own, and the feta and Greek yogurt take the protein the rest of the way to 34.

It’s the highest-fiber recipe in the high protein salad collection by a wide margin — the next one down is at 11 grams.

Why This Salad Has 34 Grams of Protein

Lentils are the base and the dairy finishes the job. This is the pairing that vegetarian high protein cooking depends on — legume plus dairy — and it’s the reason a bowl of lentils on its own, at around 18 grams, doesn’t get there.

Worth knowing if you plan to change things: removing the feta and yogurt to make this vegan drops it to about 20 grams of protein per serving. That’s a perfectly good lentil salad, but it isn’t a high protein one, and I’d rather say so than pretend otherwise. There’s a vegan option in the substitutions below.

About the Fiber

18.7 grams per serving, against a US recommended intake of about 28 grams a day. One bowl covers two-thirds of it.

Nearly all of it — 15.8 grams — comes from the lentils. The herbs, cucumber, tomatoes and onion contribute the remaining 3.

Two practical consequences. First, this is unusually filling for its calorie count; fiber and protein together are the two things that actually slow a meal down. Second, if your diet is currently low in fiber, a jump of this size in one meal can be uncomfortable. That isn’t a reason to avoid it — it’s a reason to drink water with it and not be surprised.

This Is a Big Bowl

Worth saying plainly: at 496 grams and 564 calories per serving, this is the largest and one of the most substantial recipes on the site. Fifty-five grams of carbohydrate, 36 of them net.

That’s a full lunch or dinner, not a side. If you’re eating it alongside something else, it splits into three smaller portions comfortably — though the protein then lands around 23 grams per portion rather than 34.

What You Need

Serves 2.

For the salad

• 2 cups cooked lentils (400 g), from about ¾ cup dry
• ¾ cup crumbled feta (120 g / 4 oz)
• Scant ½ cup plain 2% Greek yogurt (100 g)
• ¾ cup diced cucumber (100 g)
• ⅔ cup halved cherry tomatoes (100 g)
• ½ cup thinly sliced red onion (60 g)
• ⅔ cup chopped flat-leaf parsley (40 g)
• ⅓ cup chopped mint (20 g)

For the dressing

• 1½ tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil (20 g)
• 2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice (30 g)
• 1 teaspoon ground cumin (3 g)

Notes on the ones that matter:

French green or black beluga lentils. This is the one ingredient choice that decides whether the salad works. Brown and red lentils break down into mush — fine in soup, wrong here. Green and beluga lentils hold their shape and keep a slight bite.

Canned lentils work and cut the time to about 15 minutes. Drain and rinse them well.

Both herbs, in quantity. Sixty grams of fresh herbs for two servings looks excessive written down. It isn’t a garnish — parsley and mint are what stop a bowl of lentils tasting heavy, and halving them changes the salad completely.

Feta in a block, not pre-crumbled. Pre-crumbled feta is drier and often coated to stop it sticking. A block crumbled by hand tastes better and costs less.

How to Make It

1. Cook the lentils until just tender — around 20 minutes for green or beluga lentils from dry, tested from 15. They should hold their shape. Drain them.
2. Dress them while still warm. Whisk the olive oil, lemon juice and cumin together and pour it over the hot lentils straight away.
3. Let them cool to room temperature in the dressing, about 15 minutes.
4. Chop everything else while they cool: cucumber, tomatoes, red onion, parsley and mint.
5. Fold the vegetables and herbs through the cooled lentils.
6. Add the feta and yogurt last, in two or three gentle turns. Don’t stir it smooth — you want streaks of yogurt and pieces of feta, not a uniform paste.

Why Dressing Warm Lentils Matters

This is the technique the recipe depends on, and it’s worth two minutes of explanation.

Warm lentils absorb dressing. Cold ones sit in it. A lentil that has just come off the heat is still open and takes on lemon, oil and cumin all the way through; the same lentil at fridge temperature takes on a coating and nothing more. The difference in the finished bowl is not subtle.

The same principle applies to the salt. Lentils are bland, they’re 40% of this bowl by weight, and they season from the inside only while they’re hot.

It’s also why this salad is better an hour after you make it than immediately, and better still the next day.

Tips

Undercook the lentils slightly. They keep softening in the warm dressing. Lentils cooked to perfectly tender in the pan are mushy by the time you eat.

Soak the sliced onion in the lemon juice for five minutes before it goes in, if raw red onion is strong for you. Sixty grams is a lot of onion for two servings.

Add the mint last and chop it late. Mint darkens and loses its edge within minutes of being cut.

Don’t add salt without tasting. The feta brings 1,339 mg of sodium to the recipe on its own. Most bowls need lemon rather than salt.

A Note on Sodium

At 712 mg per serving, about 31% of the WHO’s 2,300 mg daily limit, this sits comfortably in the middle of the collection. There’s no added salt in the recipe.

What’s unusual is how concentrated the source is: the feta accounts for 94% of it, 1,339 mg of the recipe’s 1,425 mg total.

That makes it easy to adjust if you want to. Reducing the feta from 120 g to 80 g takes roughly 223 mg off each serving, at a cost of about 2.8 grams of protein. Rinsing the feta briefly under cold water also removes some of the surface brine.

Substitutions

Canned lentils instead of dry. Drain, rinse well, and warm them briefly in the pan before dressing so the warm-dressing step still works.

Goat cheese instead of feta. Milder and lower in sodium, though it doesn’t crumble the same way.

Cilantro instead of mint, or dill. Both work with cumin and lemon.

To make it vegan: replace the feta and yogurt with 150 g of firm tofu, crumbled and marinated for ten minutes in lemon juice, olive oil and a pinch of salt. That lands somewhere around 30 grams of protein per serving and keeps the texture contrast. Simply omitting the dairy drops the salad to roughly 20 grams.

Add-ins worth trying: toasted walnuts, roasted red pepper, a spoonful of harissa stirred into the yogurt, or pomegranate seeds for sweetness against the cumin.

Storage

Three days refrigerated, and this is one of the few salads here that genuinely improves overnight.

The lentils keep absorbing the dressing, the onion mellows and the cumin softens into the yogurt. What suffers is the herbs, which darken, and the cucumber, which softens after day two.

If you’re making it ahead deliberately, hold back half the parsley and mint and fold them in before serving. Add the cucumber at the same time if you’re being thorough.

Don’t freeze it. Yogurt splits and cucumber collapses.

Emily Carter

High Protein Lentil and Feta Herb Salad

5 from 2 votes

A vegetarian lentil and feta salad with 34g of protein and 19g of fiber per serving. Lentils dressed while warm, with herbs, lemon and cumin.

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Prep Time 25 minutes mins

Servings: 2

Course: Salad

Cuisine: Mediterranean

Calories: 564

Ingredients Method Notes

Ingredients

  

Salad

• 400 g 2 cups cooked green or beluga lentils
• 120 g ¾ cup feta, crumbled
• 100 g scant ½ cup plain 2% Greek yogurt
• 100 g ¾ cup cucumber, diced
• 100 g ⅔ cup cherry tomatoes, halved
• 60 g ½ cup red onion, thinly sliced
• 40 g ⅔ cup flat-leaf parsley, chopped
• 20 g ⅓ cup mint, chopped

Dressing

• 20 g 1½ tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
• 30 g 2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
• 3 g 1 teaspoon ground cumin

Method

 

Dress the lentils

1. Cook the lentils until just tender and still holding their shape, then drain them.
2. Whisk the olive oil, lemon juice and ground cumin together and pour it over the lentils while they are still hot.
3. Leave the lentils to cool to room temperature in the dressing, about 15 minutes.

Finish the salad

1. Dice the cucumber, halve the tomatoes, slice the red onion thinly and chop the parsley and mint.
2. Fold the vegetables and herbs through the cooled lentils.
3. Add the crumbled feta and Greek yogurt last, folding two or three times only so streaks of yogurt and pieces of feta remain. Taste before adding any salt.

Notes

• Use French green or black beluga lentils. Brown and red lentils break down and turn the salad to mush.
• Dressing the lentils while hot is what gets flavor inside them rather than on them.
• Canned lentils work and cut the time to about 15 minutes. Drain and rinse well.
• The feta supplies 94% of the sodium. Reducing it to 80 g takes about 223 mg off each serving.

Nutrition

Per serving (recipe makes 2):

These figures are calculated ingredient by ingredient from a USDA-sourced nutrition database and divided by the serving count. They’re calculated values rather than laboratory-tested ones, and they’ll shift with your brands — feta in particular varies in salt content. Lentils are a cooked weight; 400 g cooked comes from about 150 g dry. Carbohydrates include fiber, following the US convention, so net carbs are about 36 grams per serving.

At 19 grams, this carries more fiber than any other recipe on this site, and about two-thirds of the daily recommended intake in a single bowl.

Frequently Asked Questions

How much protein is in a lentil salad?

Lentils alone give about 9 grams of protein per cooked cup. This salad reaches 34 grams per serving because it uses two cups of lentils per person plus feta and Greek yogurt — the legume-plus-dairy pairing that most vegetarian high protein meals rely on.

What kind of lentils should I use?

French green lentils or black beluga lentils. Both hold their shape and keep a slight bite after cooking. Brown lentils are borderline and red lentils are unusable here — they collapse into purée, which is right for soup and wrong for salad.

Why do you dress the lentils while they’re hot?

Warm lentils absorb dressing all the way through; cold lentils are only coated by it. Since lentils are bland and make up about 40% of this bowl, the difference in the finished salad is substantial. It’s also why this tastes better an hour after you make it than straight away.

Can I make this salad ahead of time?

Yes, and it improves. Three days refrigerated, with the lentils continuing to absorb the dressing. The herbs darken overnight, so hold back half the parsley and mint and fold them in before serving.

Can I make it vegan?

Not by simply removing the dairy — that drops it to about 20 grams of protein per serving. Replace the feta and yogurt with 150 g of firm tofu, crumbled and marinated in lemon juice, olive oil and a pinch of salt, which lands around 30 grams and keeps the textural contrast.

More High Protein Salads

This is one of fifteen recipes in the high protein salad collection, grouped by no-cook, low carb, vegetarian and meal prep, with protein and calories compared across all fifteen.

For a fully vegan option, the edamame and crispy tofu salad delivers 32 grams of protein with no dairy at all.

Made this? Leave a rating and tell me how it went in the comments — especially if you changed something that worked.