Not All Salads Are Created Equal
The best salads are inviting, colorful, and incredibly delicious. Here are 6 easy tips for making salads so yummy that you’ll want to go back for seconds!
Kick it Up a Notch
The problem with most salads is that they’re incredibly flavorless. Store-bought and typical restaurant salads come with iceberg lettuce, shredded carrots, watery cucumbers, and a handful of grape tomatoes… yawn! Thankfully, the salads I make are completely different. They have protein, healthy fats, and are packed full of flavors, colors, and textures. I also use fresh vegetables to pack in the nutrients, so they’re super healthy too!
6 Tips for the Best Salads
1. Add Protein
Make it easy on yourself! Cooking protein is the most time consuming part of the salad. Try adding leftover steak, chicken, pork chops.. whatever you have in the fridge! Or if you’re making the salad for a party, try some of my simple protein recipes.
2. Create Flavor
No one like the same old salad over and over again. What’s the fun in that? Don’t be afraid to combine acidic, bitter, creamy, earthy, neutral, salty, savory, spicy, and sweet ingredients.
- Acidic: citrus, balsamic vinegar, sauerkraut, salsa.
- Bitter: radicchio, dandelion greens, endive.
- Creamy: avocado, guacamole, hummus, olive oil, sweet potatoes.
- Earthy: herbs, fennel, beets, celery, mushrooms.
- Neutral: cucumbers, carrots, quinoa, rice, raw nuts and seeds.
- Salty: salted nuts, olives, cheese, dried seaweed flakes.
- Savory: seasoned meat, seasoned beans, roasted vegetables.
- Spicy: green onion, red onion, hot peppers, radish.
- Sweet: a light drizzle of honey, tomato, fresh fruit, dried fruit, balsamic reduction.
3. Vary Your Greens
There are many more greens than romaine and iceberg lettuce. (By the way iceberg has very little nutrition – go for darker leaves!) You can also do some cool things by doing grilled romaine and wilted spinach or kale (lightly cooked).
- Arugula
- Baby spinach
- Endive
- Green leaf lettuce
- Herbs
- Red leaf lettuce
- Romaine
- Spring mix
- Swiss chard
- Wilted kale (lightly cooked)
4. Add Textures
A wise us of texture makes all the difference! Instead of everything blending into one bite, using different textures makes eating the salad more enjoyable and an exciting experience to eat.
- Creamy: avocado, guacamole, hummus, olive oil, sweet potatoes.
- Crunchy: raw carrots, roasted nuts and seeds, nori crinkles (seaweed).
5. Cut it Right
Think it this way, if you can’t put it on your fork with one or two other salad ingredients, it’s too big. You want to be able to get all the flavors in every bite, and you also don’t want to struggle eating your salad! Therefore, it’s important to prepare your ingredients in the appropriate size.
- Bite-sized: fruit, cucumbers, chicken.
- Shredded: carrots, lettuce, radicchio.
- Chopped: romaine, green onion, endive.
6. Make it Colorful
We eat with our eyes, so one of the most important thing is to make food look inviting! A gorgeous salad filled with oranges, reds, yellows, and purples is going to be enjoyed more than one that is completely green.
- Red: apple, radish, strawberries, tomatoes, grapefruit.
- Orange: carrot, orange, mango.
- Yellow: golden beet, peach, yellow bell pepper.
- Green: lettuce, green apple, cucumber, celery.
- Blue: blueberries.
- Purple: beets, plum, red leaf lettuce.
- Brown: meat, nuts, mushrooms, quinoa.
Bonus Tip:
The dressing matters! Try my Healthy Ranch Dressing (It’s only 2 Ingredients!)
Salad with Healthy Ranch Dressing (Only 2 Ingredients)
