Salad
1275 recipes found
Watermelon Salad With Fried Shallots and Fish Sauce
This simple salad hinges on a classic Southeast Asian flavor combination: sweet-hot-savory. This recipe calls for watermelon, but you could also use pineapple, cantaloupe, green mango or pomelo, or even leftover grilled steak or poached shrimp, as the combination of dressing, herbs and fried shallots can enliven a wide range of flavors. But using a mortar and pestle instead of the food processor and seeking out palm sugar instead of substituting brown sugar is strongly suggested here. The recipe will make more dressing than you need, so feel free to experiment after getting used to it.
Grapefruit-Herb Salad With Coconut and Crispy Shallots
This grapefruit and herb salad puts citrus front and center. It’s based on yum som-o, a pomelo salad from Thailand, where the fruit is abundant. Grapefruits are used here, but if you happen on pomelos, grab a few: They are much easier to peel and loosen from the protective piths. Fragrant toasted coconut, salty peanuts and crunchy shallots all create layers of texture. The dried shrimp adds a saltiness that greets your tongue in little bursts, and the fresh chile a lingering spice. This is a refreshing, vibrant side to accompany any rich meal.
Chicken and Cabbage Salad With Miso-Sesame Vinaigrette
This simple salad calls for a specific set of ingredients, but it can also be considered a loose guideline. Thinly sliced leftover steak, shredded salmon or sliced dense tofu could easily take the place of the chicken — and that chicken can be left over from the night before, whether it's been poached, grilled, pan-seared or cooked on a rotisserie. Any crisp, crunchy lettuce will do. You could opt for shredded carrots and diced jicama instead of cucumber and radish, or add a handful of split cherry tomatoes and raw snap peas cut on a bias. As long as the basic balance of protein, dressing, greens, vegetables and herbs is maintained, the rest is up to you and your vegetable drawer.
Squash and Spinach Salad With Sesame Vinaigrette
This vibrant squash salad can stand on its own as a main salad or as a side to accompany all sorts of roasted meats or fish. Kabocha squash can be cooked with its skin on, and a simple roast results in supersweet, creamy flesh. The triple-sesame vinaigrette combines sesame seeds for crunch, tahini for smooth texture and toasted sesame oil for rich, nutty flavor. Equally tasty warm or at room temperature, this salad is super adaptable. (Delicata or acorn squash also have edible skins and are great alternatives.) It makes a terrific lunch, with the addition of beans or soft-boiled eggs for extra protein.
Stuffing Panzanella With Cranberry Vinaigrette
The best way to reheat leftover stuffing? Press it into a pan, cut it into cubes and fry it in oil until crisp. The exterior browns and caramelizes, while the inside remains tender and creamy, just like the best bread pudding. This trick works best with stuffing made from smaller pieces of bread, but even if you don’t end up with perfect cubes, they will still be delicious. Serve them warm, on top of a fresh, raw salad tossed in a tangy cranberry-mustard vinaigrette, with fried pepitas running throughout for even more crunch. If you use a homemade cranberry sauce for the dressing, you may want to sweeten it with a touch of honey.
Roasted Eggplant Salad
In Morocco — and similarly throughout the Middle East — the most delicious salads are made with seasoned, cooked vegetables, not leafy greens. This dish, smoky eggplant salad with cilantro, infused with cumin, hot pepper and a generous amount of olive oil, is a winning combination. For the perfect flavor, you want to seriously blacken the eggplant. Choose very firm eggplants, which will have fewer seeds. The salad will keep, refrigerated, for several days.
Celery Victor Salad
At Inga’s Bar in Brooklyn, this special salad is prepared in a professional kitchen with the resources to create its many components on a rolling basis. But the chef Tirzah Stashko’s exacting recipe can produce restaurant-worthy results at home if you set aside time to tackle its parts in advance. Inspired by the classic dish created by Victor Hirtzler, the chef at San Francisco’s Hotel St. Francis from 1904 to 1926, Ms. Stashko’s dish is more audacious: While Mr. Hirtzler braised celery until sweet, subtle and succulent, Ms. Stashko bolsters the softened stalks with bitter greens and piquant mustard seeds, then slicks them with mashed anchovies, capers and garlic. There is nothing subtle about it, but the complexity of each bite will validate your efforts.
Smashed Cucumbers With Cumin Tahini
Cool, watery cucumbers and warm, rich sesame oil are a classic combination in Asia, and the chef Danny Bowien builds on that tradition here by using sesame paste and smashed cucumbers, which have even more crunch and juice than sliced ones. The lime, oregano and cumin in the dressing can lean either Middle Eastern or Mexican, but in any case they are a perfect pairing for cucumbers. Mr. Bowien adds a pinch of sugar to the strainer; it does wonders for transforming the color and taste of the cucumber peels, which can be bitter. He serves this dish with a funky, fiery drizzle of chorizo oil with dried shrimp and XO sauce, but a little chile paste and vinegar is a fine accent, too.
Spicy Smashed Cucumbers With Lime, Honey and Croutons
Smashing cucumbers instead of slicing them gives the flesh an appealing rough surface, the better to bond with any dressings you dream up. In this salad, from the Manhattan restaurant Superiority Burger, the cold crunchy cucumbers are bound in a creamy lime-spiked yogurt that the chef who invented it, Julia Goldberg, calls “fiercely acidic.” It’s a great combination, and the sweet heat of chile honey and crunch of breadsticks make each mouthful interesting. At Superiority Burger, nutty brown rice is added to the salad for yet another dimension of flavor and texture; the effect is like a rich chicken salad or egg salad, but this is vegetarian and more nutritious over all.
Panzanella With Winter Squash and Sage
This cool-weather panzanella trades tomatoes for caramelized roasted squash. It is a great salad for a buffet, but you can also make a meal of it.
Curried Carrot Salad
This savory side takes the classic French grated carrot salad and adds depth of flavor, with capers, red onions, curry powder and cumin. It keeps well, so make a large batch and keep it in the refrigerator for several not-sad desk lunches.
Tomato Salad With Red Beans
This colorful tomato salad is bulked up with red or pink beans. But it’s not a bean salad with tomatoes; it’s a tomato salad with beans. I added celery to the mix for its crunchy texture, which is nice against both the juicy tomatoes and the soft beans, and because I love its herbal, crisp and refreshing flavor.
Salade Niçoise With Yogurt Vinaigrette
The market tomatoes, green beans, peppers, cucumbers and lettuces were irresistible, and we would have been happy to dine on this iconic Provençal salad every day. I’m making the anchovies optional in this recipe, but they are always included in the authentic salade niçoise.
Cucumber-Tomato Salad With Seared Halloumi and Olive Oil Croutons
This recipe, inspired by the Greek horiatiki salad, illustrates the power of good, fresh olive oil to make a dish taste bright and rich — and never oily. It’s used here to toast the croutons, to infuse garlic into the dressing and to distribute the sweetness of ripe tomatoes throughout the salad. Finally, use it to pan-fry slices of halloumi and make this a vegetarian main course.
Cranberry Jelly Salad With Lime-Sugared Nuts
Chopped nuts and fruit bound by a wobbly sweet-tart gelatin, often called Jell-O salad in the Midwest, form a beloved side dish full of potential. Serve this gleaming cranberry variation at Thanksgiving or any holiday meal, and feel free to swap out the apple here for peeled and chopped oranges or canned diced pineapple, or use a mix of your favorite fruits. (Note that certain fruits like fresh pineapple, mango, kiwi and papaya contain enzymes that prevent gelatin from setting.) To make the lime-sugared walnut garnish even more surprising, toss it with a smidge of citric acid to give it an incomparable sourness that citrus juice alone can’t provide.
Grilled Corn and Avocado Salad With Feta Dressing
This lively salad of corn, scallions, jalapeño and avocado tossed with a tangy buttermilk-feta dressing is like summer on a plate. The sweetness of peak-summer corn and the richness of creamy avocado balance out the tartness of the dressing. To choose the perfect corn, make sure that the corn husk is bright green and slightly dewy to the touch, and that the silks peeking out at the top are yellow, not browned. Finally, the corn should be heavy for its size: the heavier the corn, the plumper the kernels.
White Bean Caprese Salad
Beloved pantry white beans add substance to this take on caprese salad, which comes together in no time. It’s a perfect side for grilled chicken or fish, and can be easily doubled to work as a main course when it’s too hot to turn on the oven. If you’re so inclined, a handful of spicy arugula, thinly sliced roasted red peppers or ribbons of prosciutto — or all three — would also be nice additions. This dish is easily transportable and tastier when eaten while sitting in a lawn chair.
Broccoli Salad With Cheddar and Warm Bacon Vinaigrette
Broccoli salads are a dime a dozen, but this one, which is adapted from Ashley Christensen's cookbook, "Poole's: Recipes From a Modern Diner," is a game-changing celebration of flavors, colors and textures: broccoli, toasted pecans and red grapes are cloaked in a warm bacon-scallion vinaigrette, then sprinkled with small chunks of sharp white Cheddar. Ms. Christensen's recipe, which uses the florets as well as the stalks, asks you to blanch the broccoli (cooking it for a few minutes in generously salted boiling water, then shocking it with salted iced water). It takes a little extra time, but the crisp-tender, bright green broccoli, seasoned inside and out, is your just reward. Try not to eat the entire bowl yourself.
Skirt Steak With Salsa Verde Salad
Salsa verde made with scallions, mint, parsley, capers and garlic becomes both the marinade for the steak and the dressing for the greens in this summery dinner salad. For extra smoky flavor, try grilling the romaine hearts (drizzle with olive oil and grill, cut side down, until lightly charred). Or, if you love bitter greens, substitute roughly chopped escarole leaves for the romaine.
Apples With Honey and Crushed Walnuts
Tradition is a beautiful thing, unless it requires you to make something you don’t enjoy making or eating. For me, that’s charoset. Classically, it’s an apple-walnut mixture (occasionally including a touch of cinnamon or dried fruit, or a combination) that ranges from chunky-relish to chunky-paste, and it’s never been my favorite thing on the table. I’ve always wanted it tangier, crunchier and, well, I wanted a salad. This is that salad. It’s meant to be more acidic than sweet, but adjust with vinegar and honey as needed to suit your preference. A note: Nearly everyone who ate this salad said it was their favorite part of the whole meal, which bruised my matzo ball ego, but I thought you should know.
Citrus Salad With Fennel and Olives
An orange salad can be a simple affair. Add sliced oranges, a few black olives and a drizzle of oil, and it’s a winning combination, known throughout the eastern Mediterranean, southern Italy and perhaps especially in Morocco. You can up the interest factor in any number of ways. Add thinly sliced fennel and red onion, some arugula, mint or basil leaves, a sprinkling of red pepper, a pinch of wild oregano or a little flaky salt. The salad needn’t be restricted to only navel oranges. In season, blood oranges, Cara Cara oranges or grapefruit are welcome to join.
Chopped Salad
A good chopped salad is a buoyant mix of different textures (creamy, crisp, crunchy, juicy), a range of colors, and sweet, salty and tangy flavors. This one has it all, in just the right proportions. You can gather all the ingredients in advance, including cooking the bacon and the eggs. But don’t toss everything together until just before serving — and, preferably, do so at the table for maximum impact.
Radicchio Salad With Anchovy Vinaigrette
Salt is the best way to tame a bitter flavor, and so a radicchio salad benefits from a dressing that tilts toward saltiness. It does not matter which type of radicchio you use — the common tight round head, clusters of white stems with burgundy leaves, or maroon-trimmed endives to name a few — they all deliver some bitterness. The vinaigrette here is bolstered with anchovies and capers.
Taktouka With Burrata and Lime-Parsley Oil
Taktouka is a Moroccan cooked salad traditionally made of bell peppers simmered in a tomato sauce that’s seasoned with sweet paprika and cumin. The end result is a lightly fragrant and flavorful dish that is typically served with plenty of bread. Here, it is also served with burrata. Although the addition of the creamy cheese is not traditional, it makes taktouka a complete vegetarian meal. The optional addition of lime-parsley oil adds a touch of acidity and freshness.