10 Satisfying Salads: Recipes

This week’s Recipe Hit List is all about salads, I’ve had too many heavy meals over the past few weeks with the holidays and new year and I’m ready to focus on some crisp veggie goodness. The salad recipes below aren’t all about slim and trim, but each implements fresh produce and that’s appealing to me right now–maybe it’s just summer garden veggies I’m pining for? Here are my recipe picks for this week…

10 Satisfying Salads

*Note: Descriptions below are quotes from the recipe sites

1. Chicken-and-Spinach Salad with Toasted-Sesame Dressing: Sesame seeds thicken and flavor the dressing here, and they’re also tossed with the chicken, so you’re sure to taste them in every bite. Keep a close eye on the seeds while they’re toasting; it doesn’t take long for them to go from golden brown to burned. Recipe from Food & Wine.
2. Chickpea & Spinach Salad with Cumin Dressing: Look at all of those fresh, spa-like ingredients… fresh spinach, chickpeas, red onion, Italian parsley, a lemony cumin vinaigrette, and an orange-tainted yogurt sauce! Am I on the right path to healthy eating or what?? Recipe from The Recipe Girl.
3. Pasta Salad with Spinach, Olives, and Mozzarella: The briny flavor of olives combines with creamy mozzarella and a tangy vinaigrette for a pasta salad that’s a shoo-in for everything from office lunches to summer picnics. Game plan: This pasta salad can be made up to 2 days ahead and stored covered in the refrigerator. Recipe from Chow.
4. Asian Chicken Salad: Feel free to “veg up” the chicken mixture with diced celery or carrot. It’ll add crunch along with bulk, helping to fill hungry bellies with fewer calories. Almost any fruit will do but fruit does contrast beautifully with the chicken and dressing mixture. Recipe found at Kitchen Parade.
5. Rhyming Broccoli Salad: Recipe from Southern Plate.
6. Bulgur Salad With Cranberries: Yet I don’t know how else I could better introduce my newest salad addiction to you other than with the words You must make this salad. This nutty goddess of a bulgur salad, mixed with cranberries and a hint of lemon has made my weekend. Well, Friday evening. Saturday afternoon. And even the grey and cloudy Sunday morning became a friendlier one while I was scraping the salad bowl to get every last bit…Recipe from Delicious Days.
7. Ginger Jeweled Salad Recipe: This is the time of year to add a bit of flash and color to your food. The skies are low-hanging and weepy. The days are short, getting shorter. In protest, each December, I arm myself with all manner of dried fruits, juicy citrus, and rosy pomegranates. They work beautifully in salads, including this jewel-inspired ensemble I made the other night. Mixed leafy salad greens, wild rice, toasted hazelnuts, dried figs and pluots are combined in a big bowl and then tossed with a simple ginger juice vinaigrette spiked with just a hint of jalapeno. It’s festive with enough going on flavor-wise to keep people guessing. Recipe from 101 Cookbooks.
8. Meat Lite: Warm Winter Salad: This week’s Meat Lite combines a huge pile of seasonal veggies (Brussels sprouts and butternut squash) with savory year-round staples to get a healthy, hearty, and warm salad perfect for these cold weather months. Recipe found at Serious Eats.
9. Cous Cous Salad with Winter Squash and Cranberries: The end result was this cous cous salad — a bright and tangy hint of springtime, and yet it’s still hearty enough to fuel us through another day of slush and wind. This salad is good enough that we think we’ll make a few more batches for brown bag lunches this week…and use up another squash or two. Recipe from The Kitchn.
10. The Perfect Caesar Salad: If you’ve never made a homemade Caesar Salad, consider this your formal invitation. There is something unbelievably satisfying about grinding garlic and anchovies into a paste, then working the dressing into the most luscious salad topper with egg yolks and olive oil. It’s lovely. It feels like the salt of the earth, like I imagine those husband hugs. Found at Joy The Baker.

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