How can a “simple” salad also be “fancy”? It turns out fancy salads just have a few added ingredients. And if those ingredients are simple to add, your every day salad can be fancy!
So how do you make fancy salad ingredients simple? First, you have to have them in the house! So a visit to the grocery store or farmers market is the first step. Second, you need to know how to add them to your salad easily, or prep them in advance so they can be added easily. Hopefully the hints below will help out with that.
This recipe is going to be a little different. It will start with some hints about cleaning lettuce, and then be a list of ingredients with ways to make their addition to a salad easy. An important concept is to have ingredients of different colors. Not only will your salad look more interesting and festive, but you will also get more complete nutrition.
Once you get used to adding “fancy” ingredients, you no longer have to pay a ton of money to get a golden beet or goat cheese salad!
Lettuce:
This is the core ingredient for most green salads. You can use pre-washed bagged lettuce, and many restaurants do this for their fancy spring mixes. If you want your salads to be fresher, washing heads of lettuce works best.
When preparing lettuce it is important to gently tear your lettuce, not cut it. Tearing lettuce allows it to rip along the natural lines between the cell walls that make up the leaf. This minimizes the number of cells that break open, and broken cells are what cause browning and eventual decay of your lettuce. You can cut your lettuce with a knife if you are going to eat it immediately.
If you are going to wash more than a few leaves of lettuce, it can be much easier to wash in a large bowl of water. Take a whole leaf and submerge it in the water. Gently spread the leaf out while underwater, and then give it a gentle shake. This should remove any dirt from the leaves, and it will sink to the bottom of the bowl. Remove the leaf from the water and give it a little shake, then tear into bite sized pieces.
Salad spinners are great to finish prepping your lettuce. Not only do they act as colanders to collect the lettuce, they also spin it dry. This leaves the lettuce slightly damp so it won’t wilt quickly, but removes large amounts of water that would water down any dressing or speed up decay. I have been using the Cook’s Illustrated recommended OXO Good Grips Salad Spinner for the last 5 years and it still works wonderfully.
Now this probably doesn’t sound that simple, but the nice thing is that cleaned and torn lettuce lasts in your refrigerator just as long or longer than whole heads! Just store the prepped lettuce in plastic bags (like the produce bag that they came in) and close the bag up tight with a twist-tie, chip clip, or clothes pin. You can add a slightly damp paper towel to the bag to add a little moisture if your lettuce gets a little dry. So clean your lettuce all at one time, and then for the next three to four days you can just grab what you need out of the bag.
This is my preferred salad dressing because it is simple to make and doesn’t overpower the taste of the ingredients of the salad. What’s the point of making a fancy salad with half a dozen ingredients if all you taste is dressing. Here’s a link to the recipe. I recommend dressing and tossing the salad right before serving so it doesn’t get soggy.
Raw Carrots and Beets:
Raw carrots and beets can add a ton of color and flavor to your salad in just a few seconds with a vegetable peeler.
For carrots, wash your carrot and cut off the top and bottom. Then hold one half of the carrot and peel strips of carrot directly into your salad off the other half. Stop peeling when the peeled half is getting thin but is still sturdy enough to hold. Switch to holding the peeled half, and then peel the other half. When you can’t peel any more, eat or toss the remainder.
Beets take a few more steps and a little more dexterity. Rinse the beet and cut off the top and bottom. Next peel off the skin. Just one layer of peeling should do the job. Now you can peel strips of beet directly into your salad. I find that it is easier to handle if I cut the beet in half. Peel until the piece of beet gets too small to hold and peel, then eat or toss the remainder.
Tomatoes, Cucumbers, Avocado:
These three vegetables are common additions to salads, and when possible you can cut or scoop bite sized pieces directly into your salad. In addition to flavor, they add different colors and textures. For cherry or grape tomatoes, I recommend cutting them in half to make them easier to stab with a fork. Avocados are like cheese, add before dressing to add creaminess or after dressing to have discrete chunks. Depending on preference cucumbers can be unpeeled, peeled, or peeled in stripes.
Cheese:
Hard or crumbly cheeses make super easy additions to a salad. If you want to add creaminess to your salad dressing, add your cheese before you add your dressing, and then toss them together well. If you like more discrete chunks of cheese, dress your salad first, then add cheese on top. Crumbly cheeses, like blue or feta, are the easiest because you just grab them and crumble them over your salad. Hard cheeses are still very easy, you just need a small flat hand grater to grate the cheese directly onto the salad. I prefer a flat grater to a small box grater, because they are much easier to clean.
Nuts, Seeds, Dried Fruits:
Adding nuts, seeds, and dried fruits are simply a matter of having them in your pantry. They add wonderful textures and flavors that contrast with most other salad ingredients. They can be sprinkled over the top of the salad before or after it is dressed. I find that they sink to the bottom of the salad bowl less when sprinkled after dressing. My favorites include pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, sliced almonds, walnuts, pecans, dried cranberries, raisins, and currants. Larger nuts and fruits can be cut or broken into your preferred size chunks.
You can use raw or roasted nuts and seeds, depending on preference. Raw nuts and seeds can be toasted at 350° for 5-7 minutes in the oven or toaster oven, and multiple salads worth can be toasted in advance to make life simpler.
Cooked Beets:
We already talked about raw beets, but cooked beets taste totally different and are relatively easy to prepare in advance. Once cooked they can be stored in the refrigerator for 4-7 days, and to add to a salad simply slice a beet into bite sided pieces and toss them in.
Pickled vegetables can add a zing to your salad. Here’s a link to my pickled vegetable recipe. You can also try things like adding a spoonful of kimchi to your salad before dressing it.
Endless Possibilities:
You don’t have to stop here! Anything you would eat without additional cooking, you can toss into your salad: artichoke hearts, hearts of palm, jicama, peppers, mushrooms, olives, quinoa, etc. Once again it is often just a matter of what is in your pantry.