Jennifer Aniston Ate This Easy Work Lunch for 10 Years on the Set of Friends (2024)

There's something satisfying about finding the perfect work lunch. You want something so delicious and special that you can eat it for five days straight and still look forward to it every time. It also needs to be packable and meal prep-friendly, so you're not clocking out for an hour in the middle of the day to fire up your oven.

It makes sense that over the course of 10 years working on the sitcom Friends, Jennifer Aniston would have found a work lunch that checks all the boxes. And while we first heard about it back in 2010, when Courtney Cox spilled the beans to the Los Angeles Times, Aniston's twist on the classic Cobb salad is once again making the rounds on social media.

Some recipe bloggers, like @themodernnonna on TikTok, have suggested that the salad was a bulgur-based with red onion, chickpeas and lots of herbs. That claim comes from an Instagram post made by Aniston as part of a campaign for Living Proof that's no longer online (you can still find it on the Wayback Machine). In 2015, Aniston called the mix of bulgur, cucumbers, parsley, mint, red onion, chickpeas, feta cheese and pistachios her "perfect salad."

But according to Aniston, the salad she actually ate was "totally different," setting the record straight in a recent interview.

"I'm sorry, I feel like I'm disappointing everybody, but that's not my salad," says Aniston during a Zoom interview with Shape. "It looks delicious, but it's not the salad that I had on Friends."

The true salad that she ate on set consisted of shredded lettuce, chicken, egg whites, chickpeas, bacon, and a basic vinaigrette, she explained. Occasionally, Aniston would add pecorino cheese from a nearby Italian restaurant to top off the Cobb-style salad.

While it's not the viral bulgur salad or the recently revealed shredded lettuce salad, our Meal-Prep Turkey Cobb Salad plays that role well. If you're packing it for lunch, keep the avocado and dressing in separate containers, and remember you could easily customize the salad with turkey bacon, chickpeas and all of your favorite fixings.

Just be mindful of your avocado if you choose to pack this lunch ahead. You could always use up part of it in the morning on some avocado toast, then seal what's left in a nonreactive container and use plastic wrap to create an air-tight seal around your avocado chunks—that's how the pros over at Chipotle keep their guac fresh all day

7 Cobb Salads for an Aniston-Inspired Lunch

1. Shrimp Cobb Salad with Dijon Dressing
2. Winter Cobb Salad
3. Chopped Cobb Salad
4. Cobb Salad with Herb-Rubbed Chicken
5. Chopped Cobb Salad with Chicken
6. Meal-Prep Turkey Cobb Salad
7. Chopped Cobb Salad with Creamy Garlic Dressing