This Is The Real Salad Jennifer Aniston Ate Every Day During Friends

A quick TikTok search for ‘Jennifer Aniston salad’ brings up an endless stream of recipe videos, some garnering millions of views. Made with ingredients like chickpeas, quinoa and feta, the dish was inspired by a salad which Jennifer Aniston allegedly ate every day for a decade while filming Friends. But did social media get the recipe wrong?

The Story Behind The Viral Jennifer Aniston Salad

The story of the Jen An salad and its journey to viral fame dates all the way back to 2010, when her co-star Courteney Cox described a dish they ate on the set of Friends in an interview with the Los Angeles Times. 

‘It wasn’t really a Cobb salad,’ Cox said, describing their go-to meal. ‘It was a Cobb salad that Jennifer doctored up with turkey bacon, garbanzo beans, and I don’t know what else. She just has a way with food, which really helps. Because if you’re going to eat the same salad every day for 10 years, it’d better be a good salad, right?’ A Cobb salad is a classic American salad made with greens, tomato, turkey breast and boiled eggs.

Then, in 2015, Aniston confused things by taking over the Living Proof Instagram and sharing a picture of her ‘perfect salad’, a different dish to the one Cox described made with bulgur wheat, pistachios, feta cheese and mint. TikTokers jumped on this and began recreating recipes, dubbing them the salad consumed by Aniston and Cox on the set of Friends every day for 10 years. Naturally, it took off online, but led to a mix-up between the two salads.

@everything_delish 24 million views later – my most viral video of 2022! 🫶 #salad #jenniferanistonsalad ♬ original sound – Jamie Milne

In June 2022 Aniston set the record straight in an interview with Elle. ‘Well, that salad, dare I debunk that? That’s not the salad that I had every day on Friends. I feel terrible because it’s literally taken off like crazy, and it looks like a delicious salad, by the way, but that’s not the one that I had on Friends.’ So what did Aniston and Cox sit down to eat every lunch time while filming the biggest sitcom of the ’90s?

What Is The Real Jennifer Aniston Salad?

In a YouTube video with Allure, Aniston shared the ingredients for the actual salad she ate during Friends. ‘The salad was from the commissary and it was a Cobb salad that we basically butchered,’ she explained. ‘It was just iceberg lettuce I believe… and chopped tomatoes, garbonzo beans… salami, crunchy turkey bacon, chicken, pecorino cheese and Italian dressing.’

@allure232The Jennifer Aniston Salad Explained by Jennifer Aniston!♬ son original – Allure

Keen to give it a go? Simply mix all the above ingredients together in a bowl and drizzle over some Italian-style dressing (a vinaigrette typically made with oil, vinegar, lemon juice and herbs). And if the TikTok-famous dish is more your vibe, mix a grain (either bulgur wheat or quinoa) with chickpeas, cucumber, pistachios, diced red onion, chopped mint and parsley.