22 Winter Salads in Three Steps or Less
Enjoy the crisp and vibrant flavors of winter with these colorful and filling salads. These recipes embrace seasonal ingredients like beets, cabbage and cranberries. Plus, these tasty main dishes and side dishes are on the table in just three steps or less. Recipes like our Kale & Shaved Brussels Sprouts Salad with Avocado Caesar Dressing and Spicy Black Eyed Pea & Collard Green Salad are sure to become a staple in your kitchen this winter.
Broccoli, Chickpea & Pomegranate Salad
Simple steps give this broccoli salad recipe a more nuanced flavor: soaking the onion tempers its bite and toasting the cumin enhances its aroma. Serve alongside grilled chicken, pork or fish.
Winter Cobb Salad
This seasonal twist on a traditional Cobb salad swaps in kale for lettuce and spiced butternut squash for chicken but keeps the essential avocado, blue cheese, bacon and egg.
Kale & Shaved Brussels Sprouts Salad with Avocado Caesar Dressing
This salad combines the flavors of a Caesar salad with tender green lacinato kale and the crunch of raw, shaved Brussels sprouts. The brown-butter breadcrumbs add additional crunch and a nutty, toasted flavor. Serve with grilled chicken for an added boost of protein.
Apple-Cranberry Spinach Salad with Goat Cheese
The tangy-sweet dressing in this spinach salad beautifully amplifies the apples and cranberries—and the creamy goat cheese transforms it into the perfect salad. Tasters raved about this easy fall salad. If you can't find Pink Lady apples, any sweet, crisp apple is a worthy substitute. Want to make this salad a main meal? Top with some rotisserie chicken, chickpeas or tofu.
Spicy Black-Eyed Pea & Collard Green Salad
This black-eyed pea and collard green salad recipe can be served warm or at room temperature, either as a side dish or as a vegetarian main course along with rice or crusty bread. Harissa and peri-peri sauce provide gentle heat, and preserved lemon gives it briny tang.
Anti-Inflammatory Chicken & Beet Salad
Tart cherry juice concentrate adds flavor and helps fight inflammation when teamed up with other anti-inflammatory foods like beets and walnuts in this quick salad. Buying packaged cooked beets cuts down on time (and mess!). Look for them in the produce section where other prepared vegetables are sold.
Broccoli & Cauliflower Salad
This festive holiday salad recipe features plenty of oven-roasted broccoli and cauliflower combined with massaged kale. Why massage the kale? It helps tenderize the leaves and infuses the sweet-tangy flavor of the dressing directly into the heart of this healthy winter salad.
Spinach & Warm Mushroom Salad
In this hearty mushroom and spinach salad recipe, sturdier “mature” spinach leaves hold up better than baby spinach when tossed with the warm mushroom-and-bacon vinaigrette.
Balsamic Berry Vinaigrette Winter Salad
This festive winter salad recipe features colorful greens, fruit and cheese tossed with a light and zesty dressing.
Winter Salad with Toasted Walnuts
This salad was one of the favorites chosen from over 1,000 salad recipes for our 30th anniversary issue. In 2004, Deborah Madison waxed poetic about winter ingredients, particularly nuts. "In the chill air of winter, nuts move up to center stage as do their warming, substantial, golden oils—so good with winter salad greens and vegetables, such as shaved fennel, all of which are likely to end up in a salad together," she says. Madison suggested using a mix of lettuces that balance each other here—a mild, tender variety, such as Boston, with a more intense and sturdy green, such as escarole, for instance.
Kale & Quinoa Salad with Cranberries
This autumnal kale-quinoa salad is a delicious mixture of texture and flavor. Celery and walnuts add crunch while dried cranberries and apple add a sweet-tart note. We use blue cheese in this salad, but feta, Parmesan, goat cheese or manchego would be just as tasty.
Chopped Salad with Apple & Cranberry
Cranberries and apples add pops of sweetness to combine with the salty bites of feta cheese in this tasty salad. We use curly kale here, but you could substitute lacinato if you prefer. Serve this salad alongside any holiday meal or dinner party menu.
Beet & Shrimp Winter Salad
This healthy dinner salad recipe gets its staying power from protein-packed shrimp and fiber-rich barley. With a simple red-wine vinaigrette, this quick salad makes just one serving but is easy to double or triple. Look for precooked beets with other prepared vegetables in the produce department.
Quinoa Avocado Salad with Buttermilk Dressing
Persimmons add sweetness to this healthy avocado salad. Crispy fried quinoa adds unexpected crunch, putting the salad over the top in the best way.
Clean Out Your Fridge with This Veggie-Packed Farro & Chickpea Salad
Here's a great dinner template to keep in your back pocket when you get to the end of the week and you don't think you have anything stocked for dinner. A couple pantry staples, a little cooked whole grain, some bold-flavored condiments, a few crunchy veggies and you're done. Here, we use cilantro, lime juice and garlic in the dressing, but feel free to riff on it with whatever you might have on hand.
Chickpea, Artichoke & Avocado Salad with Apple-Cider Dressing
This delicious 400-calorie salad is a helpful tool for weight loss because it provides a good balance of fiber, protein and healthy fats from loads of veggies and beans, all tossed in a tangy apple-cider vinaigrette. To meal-prep these for lunch throughout the week, pack the dressing and the salad separately and make sure your veggies are thoroughly dried before packing them together.
Shaved Root Vegetable Salad with Pistachios
This centerpiece-worthy salad calls for buying up the most colorful roots in the produce section. We like using a rainbow of beets and carrots for the most stunning presentation.
Caesar Salad with Crispy Artichokes
This Caesar salad skips croutons in favor of cheesy pan-fried artichokes for an extra boost of vegetables and the same satisfying crunch.
Blue Cheese Broccoli Salad
Creamy blue cheese dressing coats fresh, crunchy broccoli in this easy side salad. Dried apricots add pops of sweetness and color, while crispy bits of bacon provide a salty bite. This recipe is easily doubled to serve a crowd.
Southwest Chopped Salad with Tomatillo Dressing
Jicama is the crunchy, sweet tuberous root of a legume native to Central America. If you love it in this salad, try including sticks of it with your next crudités spread.
Chicken, Brussels Sprouts & Mushroom Salad
Shaving the vegetables for this easy salad recipe makes them deliciously tender-crisp without having to cook anything and helps them stand up to the bright homemade vinaigrette and salty Parmesan cheese.
Spinach Salad with Warm Bacon Vinaigrette, Red Onion & Avocado
Jessica B. Harris loves green salads, especially those that she can throw together quickly from whatever she has on hand in her fridge. After crisping bacon, she uses the fat in the pan to make a flavorful hot vinaigrette that she pours over the greens, onion and creamy avocado. The result is a beautiful, semi-wilted, warm spinach salad. Read more about why Harris craves this salad and how she stocks her fridge here.
Read the original article on Eating Well.
