I know I should be eating more salad. I’m talking about the green salad, tossed salad, with fresh greens, other stuff, dressing.
I do not have a gift for making salad. Restaurant salads, even the little piddly “side salads,” always taste better to me than my own. I buy already assembled salads, and most of the time I’ll eat some of it over a couple of days, but let the rest deteriorate into a science project in the fridge before I feel justified in throwing it away. Yes, I admit am a bad person.
Any advice, tips, recipes, guidance? What greens to buy? How to keep them, what else to add, toppings, dressing. What are your favorite combos?
First, you have the lettuce component. I find iceberg to be pretty worthless. Go with some mixed greens or maybe some spinach. Leaf lettuces are good. Butter lettuce is good. To some extent, it’s a question of what’s on sale.
Next, let’s talk veggies. I’m not super adventurous but I love red onion, green onion, bell peppers, grilled asparagus, mushrooms, jicama, black olives, broccoli, cabbage, kale, and a few more if I think about it. Cucumber slices (they make me burp), tomatoes, corn niblets maybe, some grated carrots,
Next let’s talk cheeses. I love me some feta, parm, cotija, and others.
And let’s go to the (optional) meats. Grilled chicken, grilled steak, deli ham bits, maybe some bacon…would you go pepperoni, salami, or bits of deli turkey etc.? Maybe some shrimp or krab?
Next, there’s dressings. Want to go lo cal vinaigrette or maybe a ranch variety? Mrs. L puts Herdez guac salsa on a lot of her salads. Hell, there’s a whole salad dressing aisle, right?
I always put coarse ground black pepper on mine, as well as some garlic powder. I usually avoid the carbs but you could also look at croutons and tortilla strips.
I will also put fresh pineapple in, maybe some walnuts (yum!) or sunflower seeds. If I’m super fancy I’ll slice up some hard boiled egg for it.
So there are lots of combinations you could try. The fun of salads, I think, is that every once in awhile you get it just right.
I like flat leaf parsley and cilantro mixed into my salad greens. The greens are less important: romaine, iceberg, arugula/rocket, sprouts, endive, etc. all good. For reference, I’m working through a bag of arugula right now.
Love the ginger garlic dressing from a ‘Japanese Steak House’ but you must double the ginger and double the garlic.
Very easy salad dressing is just some red wine vinegar, some olive oil, Italian seasoning, some garlic, a touch of pepper, and maybe a bit of salt.
Make your own croutons too.
If you have any sort of bakery nearby, they will sell day old bread. I’m a bit partial to sourdough, but pretty much anything will do, depending on your preferences.
Cut it up into cubes, bake it in an oven for a while, then toss with some oil and Italian seasoning and garlic. Toss it back in the oven for a bit.
Best croutons you will ever have.
I like to throw a little fruit into my salads as well. Blueberries or strawberries are always a win.
If you are feeling adventurous, a bit of cheese can make a whole new experience. I’m partial to freshly grated parmesan, but a bit of feta or fresh mozzarella can give it some pop too.
I’m not all that particular about my greens, I often just buy a bag of salad premix.
I’m fond of this recipe for Cobb salad, purported to be the original served at the Brown Derby restaurant. I substitute packaged spring mix for the prescribed watercress and chicory, and use romaine hearts for the base. I then toss the greens with the dressing, plate, and arrange the other ingredients in wedges over the top.
This is something that works for me … I love salad veggies, but I hate to eat “a salad”. It’s the lack of a protein component that really trips me up - if I’m eating up my nice raw veggies while also eating something more substantial, then that’s all good, but if the raw veggies are just sitting there as a lump all together, that’s deeply unappetising.
My current fave is pasta and salad - ordinary amount of pasta, mix in some salmon/tomato paste/sour cream as a sauce, and then just go nuts with mixing salad veggies in. Tomatos, cucumbers, avocados, capsicums are my main go-tos but I can also imagine corn, carrot, lettuce, spinach working with the meal.
Don’t listen to the complicated, “how to make the perfect salad” suggestions. I was in your situation. I knew I needed to eat more salad, but I didn’t want to spend a lot of time and effort, and I wanted the salad to be made to my tastes.
What I do is buy a head of lettuce, rip it up and store it in a tupperware tub (it will last 3-4 days). I keep a sort of “salad bar” in my fridge- pepperoni bites, cheese, olive salad, marinated artichokes, sweet peppers…as well as a few easy vegetables (onions, tomatoes, etc.) When I get the urge for a salad, I pull out the lettuce, pick my ingredients, add salad dressing, and I have a quick meal with almost no prep time and little cleanup required.
When the lettuce starts to get a little brown, it’s time to add another head to my list (and tomatoes). Most of the other ingredients either keep forever in the jar or have a long shelf life (cheese, onions, croutons, etc.).
The trickiest part was picking the dressing(s) that tasted best to me. I had to try a number of brands and types, but I’ve settled on Newman’s Own Italian.
my favorite salad is taco salad …its pretty much taco meat and fixins in a bowl but instead of plain tortillas you throw in a bag of your favorite flavor or two of doritos or tortilla chips
taco bell made a int inverting the recipe by just making it a dorito flavored shell but to me it wasn’t the same …
Now you can get them in mexican restaurants with beans and such added in and in a big tortillia shell bowl but again there missing something …
reminds me of the old gag thats along the lines of : the wife nags the husband into eating salad because hes on a diet and he finally eats one and says “wow this good but its missing something " she says oh what did i forget to put in ? he deadpans " the steak”
aye, there’s the rub. I like my salads to have actual green stuff in them, but stuff like spring mix is so fragile I only can buy a couple days’ worth so I can eat most of it before it turns to mush.
I suspect the bottomline is to decide upon a couple of simple recipes that appeal to you - makes it easier to buy the ingredients and use them before they go bad. IMO that’s a key aspect of increasing your plant-based food (unless you go frozen).
Our go-to green salad is leaf lettuce, tomato and avocado, w/ poppyseed dressing and chopped walnuts. So there are really only 3 fresh ingredients to buy on weekly shopping, and you don’t have the produce aisle “paralysis” of what to buy. Our local supermarket almost ALWAYS has those 3 ingredients. If they are out one week - or if avocados are crazy expensive, well, maybe that week we’ll eat fewer salads and more OTHER veggies.
Buy a head of red or green leaf lettuce, 3-6 tomatoes, and 3 avocados, and you’ve got the makings for 3 days of salad for 2 people. Prep is simple/quick - tear the leaves off the ribs and rip into smaller pieces, cut the tomato/avocado and distribute among the salads, sprinkle a few nuts and dress. Make a point of eating a salad for lunch or w/ dinner more days than not after shopping, and the ingredients won’t go bad. The lettuce is really the only thing to worry about. Tomatoes/avocados last quite a while.
Yeah, we’d be more “virtuous” if we used a homemade vinagrette - but if that makes us less eager to eat the salads, is it a benefit? And once you hit upon a dressing you like, you don’t need to experiment with the zillion other varieties on the market shelf.
Another option is those “salads in a bag.” I really like the kale version in our store, and when on sale, it is not too pricey.
