Salad
1275 recipes found
Sheet-Pan Roasted Salmon Niçoise Salad
Here, the classic French salad becomes an elegant dinner, with mustard-glazed salmon in place of tuna, roasted vegetables and jammy eggs served over a jumble of salad greens tossed with a red-wine vinaigrette. Roasting the vegetables, rather than serving some steamed and some raw as you would for a traditional Niçoise, gives this dish great texture and a delicious contrast of temperatures. The vegetables and salmon are roasted on a single sheet pan, making this an elevated take on the one-dish dinner — fit for company and easy enough for a weeknight.
Watermelon Chaat
This recipe for watermelon chaat, a savory fruit salad dressed in toasted cumin and dried mango powder, comes from Malika Ameen, a cookbook author whose Pakistani-American family in Chicago makes infinite variations on fruit chaat in the summer. You could swap out the watermelon for a mix of what's in season, whether it's stone fruit, berries or cubed apple and pear. It's an ideal dish to break the fast during Ramadan, full of flavor and hydrating, and quick to put together.
Green Peach Salad With Simple Lime Dressing
Eddie Hernandez, who runs a string of Mexican restaurants in Georgia and Tennessee called Taqueria del Sol, came up with a delicious way to deal with hard, unripe peaches. Sliced thinly, softened with salt and brightened with lime juice and Serrano chiles, the peaches become a salad that’s a cousin to Mexican street snacks built from unripe mangoes and papayas and punched up with chile salt. The salad keeps well in the refrigerator for several days. Mr. Hernandez likes to eat it with a scoop of cottage cheese on the side, though dabs of goat cheese would do as well.
Esquites
Esquites are the salad form of elotes, charcoal-grilled Mexican corn on the cob that is slathered with a creamy sauce, seasoned with chile powder and lime juice and topped with Cotija, a crumbly, aged Mexican cheese. This version doesn’t require a grill, and instead chars the corn kernels in a hot skillet until browned and caramelized. Cotija brings salty, milky accents to the salad. Ancho chile powder adds smoky notes, but you can use any type of chile powder you favor. Leftovers transform quickly into a great pasta salad the next day; simply toss with cooked pasta and olive oil.
Tomato and Peach Salad With Whipped Goat Cheese
Whizzed in the food processor with some heavy cream and lemon zest, earthy goat cheese becomes rich and creamy, the perfect complement to juicy peaches and tomatoes. Fresh purslane, if you can find it, provides a slight crunch to the salad, but mâche or watercress would also work well. You could also tear up some basil, parsley or other tender herbs you have lying around and toss those in just before serving. Colorful, fresh and easy, this salad works as a starter, a side or a summery supper, piled on top of grilled bread.
Greek Chicken With Cucumber-Feta Salad
This meal has the flavors of a Greek combination plate with chicken souvlaki, Greek salad and tzatziki, but it is streamlined for the home cook. Boneless chicken thighs are coated with herby, garlicky yogurt, then seared until tender inside and crusty and browned outside. Extra yogurt dresses cucumbers and tomatoes that have had a chance to drain with salt so they taste their most vivid. Feta and olives add briny bites to the creamy, crunchy salad, but feel free to incorporate other elements of Greek salad or tzatziki, like romaine lettuce, bell peppers, mint or dill, toasted walnuts or thinly sliced red onion. Eat with lemon potatoes or toasted pita.
Crispy Rice Salad With Halloumi and Ginger-Lime Vinaigrette
If you delight in leftover rice — and the infinite ways to put it to good use — here’s another technique to add to your repertoire: Crisp cooked rice in just a couple tablespoons of hot oil until it’s scorched in spots, and simultaneously crunchy and chewy. The turmeric-stained rice clusters are used as salty croutons in this salad of ginger-lime marinated onions, seared halloumi and a pile of baby greens, a delicate backdrop that highlights the rice’s crunch and the halloumi’s squeak. A riot of texture, this salad crackles and pops.
Tabbouleh
We think of tabbouleh as a bulgur salad with lots of parsley and mint. But real Lebanese tabbouleh is a lemony herb salad with a little bit of fine bulgur, an edible garden that you can scoop up with romaine lettuce heart leaves or simply eat with a fork. This will keep for a day in the refrigerator, though the bright green color will fade because of the lemon juice.
Kale and Quinoa Salad With Tofu and Miso
A hearty base of kale, quinoa and crisp tofu give this easy salad enough bite to serve as a meal. Curly kale provides heft and holds up nicely to the sweet, sour and spicy dressing. Use your hands to massage the vinaigrette into the kale, and let it marinate for at least 10 minutes to tenderize the sturdy greens. Finish the dish with a drizzle of sriracha and honey, but use a light touch: The point is to balance the heat and sweetness levels without overwhelming the delicate miso vinaigrette. If you like, double the dressing and refrigerate it for future use; it makes a fantastic dip for grilled chicken or pork, or a glaze to brush on salmon before broiling.
Soba Salad
For most people, even experienced cooks, weeknight dinners are not so much a result of careful planning but of what’s on hand — and what can be accomplished fairly quickly. Noodles of all kinds are easy and beloved. But soba noodles, a Japanese staple, are special: they usually take no more than 3 to 4 minutes to cook and, because they’re made from buckwheat, have a slightly firm texture and a nutty flavor. Traditionally, soba are served hot and cold, making them a flexible partner for almost any fresh ingredients you have in the kitchen. In this case, they are paired with shelled frozen edamame, carrots and spinach and a light dressing.
Puttanesca Chickpea-Tomato Salad
This recipe turns tomato salad into a meal by marrying creamy beans with some of the briny, salty ingredients found in pasta puttanesca, like tomatoes, capers, olives and garlic. While Parmesan isn’t traditional to puttanesca, coarsely chopped pebbles of it add bursts of umami to this salad. Feel free to omit the cheese for a vegan dish, or embellish the mix with fresh or dried chile, tinned fish or more vegetables. This recipe is not only adaptable but also improves as it sits: The tomato juices mingle with the oil, olives and capers — and the beans drink it all up.
Beet and Lentil Salad With Cheddar
This salad is a party of sweet, earthy and salty flavors. Store-bought, vacuum-packed beets are called for here, which are not only convenient, but have a mellow fruitiness and a tender texture that is ideal in salads. (If you have fresh beets, and have the time to roast them, you can use those instead.) Beets naturally pair well with sharp and tangy ingredients, and while goat cheese may be a more common accompaniment, crumbly aged Cheddar offsets the sweetness of the beets and the apple cider dressing (though any sharp Cheddar works). French green lentils offer a nutty, peppery, almost mineral-like flavor and are perfect for salads because they hold their shape well, though if you only have brown lentils, that’s just fine. (They cook slightly faster, so adjust the cook time accordingly.) Finally, there’s no shame in opting for canned lentils.
Crunchy Cauliflower Salad
This chopped salad celebrates raw cauliflower, a hearty vegetable often reserved for roasting, which renders it golden and soft. Here, crunchy, thinly sliced cauliflower and radicchio bring a mix of slightly sweet and pleasantly bitter flavors; the honey and Meyer lemon vinaigrette is a nod to winter, when citrus fruits are at their brightest and sweetest. Customize the salad with whatever crunchy vegetables you have on hand; celery, fennel and cabbage all make great candidates. This dish makes the perfect side for roasted fish or chicken, or enjoy the salad as a main dish topped with beans, shredded chicken or canned tuna.
Large White Bean, Tuna and Spinach Salad
You could use canned cannellini beans for this, but I love the size and texture of large white limas. I don’t soak limas because the skins tend to detach and the beans fall apart when you cook them. You want them intact for this, but you also need to make sure to cook them all the way through.
Roasted Beet and Winter Squash Salad With Walnuts
The colors of the vegetables were the inspiration behind this beautiful salad. You may be fooled into thinking the orange vegetables next to the dark beets are sliced golden beets, but they are slices of roasted kabocha squash.
Curried Rice and Quinoa Salad
For a salad to make a meal, it should contain something more substantial, like grains, beans or potatoes, or protein-rich ingredients like cheese, fish or eggs. Poach an egg, place it atop a generous serving of frisée salad tossed with croutons, herbs and a tart vinaigrette, and you’ve got lunch or a light dinner. A spinach salad with green beans can be transformed into a comforting and nourishing meal when warm potatoes tossed with vinaigrette and feta are added to the mix. I’ve made this mixed-grains salad using both regular brown rice and brown basmati rice. I like the lightness of the basmati brown rice, but I also enjoy the chewiness of regular brown rice.
Beet and Radicchio Salad With Goat Cheese and Pistachios
Here's a hearty roasted beet salad that doesn't take hours to make. Cutting the beets up into small cubes shortens the cooking time and results in all over caramelization that you don't get with roasted whole beets. By the time you're finished prepping the rest of the salad, the beets will be done.
Orange and Radish Salad With Pistachios
Before I put this salad together, I could imagine how it would feel and taste in my mouth: the juicy, sweet oranges playing against the crisp, pungent radishes. The combination was inspired by an orange, radish and carrot salad in Sally Butcher’s charming book “Salmagundi: A Celebration of Salads From Around the World.” The salad is a showcase for citrus, which is in season in California. Navels are particularly good right now, both the regular variety and the darker pink-fleshed Cara Cara oranges that taste like a cross between an orange and a pink grapefruit. I fell in love with blood oranges when I lived in Paris years ago, and although the Moro variety that we get in the United States doesn’t have quite as intense a red-berry flavor as the Mediterranean fruit, its color is hard to resist. Here I use a combination of blood oranges and navels, and a beautiful mix of red and purple radishes and daikon. Dress this bright mixture with roasted pistachio oil, which has a mild nutty flavor that marries beautifully with the citrus. Put the prepared oranges and radishes in separate bowls and use a slotted spoon to remove the orange slices from the juices. Just before serving, arrange the oranges and radishes on a platter or on plates, spoon on the dressing and juices, and sprinkle with pistachios. You can also layer the elements, undressed, and pour on the liquids right before serving. For a juicier version, skip the slotted spoon and toss all of the ingredients together for a quenching salad that is best served in bowls.
French Grated Carrot Salad
Want to work more carrots into your diet? Make up a batch of grated carrot salad every week. Standard fare in French cafes and charcuteries, this salad keeps well. If you have it handy, you’ll be eating carrots every day. This classic version is made with a salad oil rather than stronger-tasting olive oil. You have a choice here, as extra-virgin olive oil has health benefits that canola oil may not. Still, choose a mild-tasting olive oil rather than a strong green one. For a twist on this version, try it curried, bolstered with capers, cumin and curry powder.
Rotisserie Chicken Salad With Greens and Herbs
This is a no-recipe recipe, a recipe without an ingredients list or steps. It invites you to improvise in the kitchen. Pick up a heat-lamp roast chicken at the market on the way home — it’s O.K.! — and tear it apart to feed four, or half of it for two, shredding the meat with your fingers. Mix the chicken with a few handfuls of baby arugula, a large handful of sliced scallions and a lot of chopped cilantro. Cut an avocado or two into the mix if you have them on hand. Then make a dressing out of lime juice — one juicy squeezed lime will do — a pressed garlic clove and a few glugs of olive oil, seasoned with salt and pepper. Drizzle that over the top and serve. Dinner in 15 minutes, tops. Sam Sifton features a no-recipe recipe every Wednesday in his What to Cook newsletter. Sign up to receive it. You can find more no-recipe recipes here.
Radicchio Caesar Salad
This fragrant take on Caesar salad uses up an entire tin of anchovies and replaces the sweet romaine with gloriously bitter radicchio. For the dressing: Though you could use a raw egg yolk and slowly stream in oil while whisking constantly, relying on the already emulsifying qualities of store-bought mayonnaise gets you to creamy heights with less fuss. This salad does not keep well, so serve it immediately, while the radicchio is still plump and crunchy. There’s no added salt in this recipe, as the many anchovies season both the bread crumbs and the dressing. But should your radicchio be especially bitter — pleasant though that flavor can be — feel free to add a pinch of salt to help tame the bitterness.
Shrimp Salad
Using plenty of lemon — both the zest and juice — is the secret to this tangy, creamy shrimp salad. If you’re using this to make sandwiches, chop the shrimp into pieces before adding them to the dressing. You can also leave the shrimp whole for an elegant salad, served with lettuce, avocado, and other vegetables if you like. If you’re starting with precooked shrimp, you can skip the first step entirely. The salad can be made and refrigerated for up to 6 hours before serving.
Cold Noodle Salad With Spicy Peanut Sauce
Soba, Japanese buckwheat noodles, are ideal for salads because they taste particularly great when served cold. Crunchy vegetables are highlighted here, adding lots of crisp, fresh texture. Substitute with any raw vegetables you have on hand, such as cabbage, carrot, fennel, asparagus, broccoli or cauliflower. The spicy peanut sauce is very adaptable: If you don’t want to use peanut butter, you can use any nut or seed butter, like cashew, almond, sunflower or even tahini. Both the soba and the peanut sauce can be prepared ahead of time and stored in the fridge overnight, but wait to combine them until you are ready to eat for the best texture and consistency. The peanut sauce thickens as it sits, so add a tablespoon or two of water to loosen it up, if necessary.
Crunchy Kale Salad With Plums and Dates
Kale salad has passed whatever nebulous test there is of food fads and become a mainstay, especially in the fall, but it’s ideal for summer, too, because it doesn’t wilt in the heat. If anything, you want to be sure to crush the finely sliced greens until they’re droopy. Kale salad can feel like a chore to chew if the greens aren’t softened sufficiently, so massage them into submission. To add a welcome, easy crunch to the tender leaves, this salad is littered with roasted, salted sunflower seeds. They’re a savory contrast to tangy wedges of juicy plums and chewy, sweet dates in the lemony mix that holds up well on any picnic table and for up to 3 days in the fridge.