Tried and True Salad Recipes Plus My Universal Salad Recipe
It's here. The post you've all been waiting for. My culinary salad masterpieces. They're simple, delicious, and healthy; they'll make you love salad again, and not a single one calls for iceberg.
(If you’re just tuning in, go back and read last week’s post Your Salad Repair Manual before you attempt any salad recipes.)
Before I get into the salad recipes, I need to establish a fundamental culinary principle: you must master the basics before you can tinker.
This principle applies to other areas of life as well. To be an excellent writer, you must be highly skilled in the rules of grammar before you are allowed to break them for emphasis. For example, you must be a master of complete sentences before you can successfully use sentence fragments for emphasis. Like this one.
If you start breaking the rules of grammar before you understand them, you not only look unprofessional and unskilled to your readers but you make communication cumbersome. Your poor use of grammar will trip people up and interrupt the flow of thought. Only a skilled grammarian knows how to break the rules without confusing the reader.
When it comes to recipes, I’m all about innovating, being creative, using what you have on hand, and tapping into your intuitive side while cooking. I rarely use recipes anymore. But it only works to improvise once you have mastered the basics. This means that you may need to follow a recipe exactly a few times before you can alter it without damaging its internal integrity.
Let me give you an example from a family favorite. I have this very simple yet highly-prized soup I make called Sausage Broccoli Soup. This soup is so cherished that it has on occasion been requested for a birthday dinner in lieu of Pesto Pasta and Boeuf Bourguignon. The main ingredient is brats, and in full disclosure, I’m not normally that big of a fan of brats in general. But the brats in this soup are different.
First, you brown them whole in a cast iron skillet until they form a deep brown crust (but not black), then you slice them into rounds (it’s ok if they’re still slightly pink inside), and then you toss the rounds back in the skillet and brown them so they are deep brown on both sides. Then take homemade bone broth (either chicken or beef but I prefer beef) and deglaze the pan.
What I just described to you is where all the flavor for the entire soup comes from. The lightly steamed broccoli, the al dente pasta shells, and the freshly grated parmesan are all afterthoughts to the main flavor of the deeply browned brats. When various members of the family have been gluten-free, carb-free, carnivore, (which at times has been up to 5 of us), we’ve been happy as clams eating only the broth, the brats, and parmesan. The brat-browning technique produces that much flavor.
One time, a very long time ago, I passed this recipe on to a friend. When I saw her a week later, she said, “I made your soup but it didn’t turn out so good. But then I substituted kielbasa for the brats.”
To which I responded:
I use kielbasa in other recipes, for sure. But it absolutely is not the same soup if you substitute kielbasa. You need so many other flavors in the soup to make up for the fact that you skipped the flavorful brat-browning process.
But here’s my central point: if this poor unfortunate soul would have followed the directions exactly the first time she made it, she would have understood the spirit of the soup and where its internal integrity lies, how the flavors played together, and she would have never dared to make such a grave mistake.
However, one could make a different alteration such as kale instead of broccoli. I’d never dare try that on my family because they might erupt into hysterics but for a less emotionally-involved crowd, that could work.
So when it comes to the recipes below, try them at least once exactly before you substitute goat cheese for feta or raspberries for strawberries. You have to understand what the strawberries, feta, and almonds are accomplishing before you can improvise.
Strawberry Feta Salad
I learned this salad from my grandmother and have probably made it more than any other salad. Depending on how much salad people eat, the proportions below may only serve 4-6. I often double or triple the amounts below. Using bibb lettuce here is important. Do not, I repeat, do not substitute iceberg.
1/4 cup white granulated sugar
1/4 cup good quality balsamic vinegar (always purchase vinegar in a glass bottle as the acid will leech a plastic bottle)
1/4 cup good quality olive oil (single source usually means it’s less likely to be cut with seed oils, or at least will have fewer)
One head bibb lettuce (aka butter lettuce), washed well, dried, and finely chopped
1 pint ripe strawberries, washed, hulled, and thinly sliced
1 package feta cheese crumbles (don’t get the low fat variety)
1/4 cup sliced almonds
Make the dressing first so it can cool while you prep the rest. In a small saucepan, mix 1/4 cup sugar with 1/4 cup balsamic vinegar over medium-high heat. Stir until the sugar is dissolved and it just boils. Remove from heat and sprinkle with salt and pepper to taste. Place in the fridge to cool for about 15 minutes. (Don’t let it cool too long as it will get too thick.) Remove, and mix with 1/4 cup olive. Pour on the chopped bibb lettuce, and stir until well coated. Now sprinkle with remaining ingredients.
(A note on almonds: You have three options for sliced almonds. There are many times I serve them raw, especially on a normal night. But they taste amazing lightly toasted in a dry skillet over medium heat. Just shake the skillet until they’re golden brown. But when making a salad for a child’s birthday or to make it extra special for company, I dump a tablespoon or so of white sugar into the skillet while browning the almonds and this makes candied almonds. After the sugar melts, let them cool spread out on wax paper.)
Stephanie’s Salad
I learned this one from my Italian sister-in-law, and I actually believe making this salad was the first time I ever made a homemade dressing. She was also the first person who taught me to salt and pepper my lettuce. Life changing!
One head red or green leaf lettuce (red is more tender but green is more crisp)
5 slices bacon (don’t, under any circumstance, use artificial bacon bits. Those only belong on iceberg and you know how I feel about iceberg.)
Goat cheese crumbles (get the pre-crumbled container if you can. You can use a goat cheese log if you have to but it’s difficult to crumble since it’s so sticky)
avocado slices
Olive oil
Red wine vinegar
Salt and pepper
If this is just a regular night, I’m not getting out the skillet and frying the bacon. I’m just gonna be a lazy, entitled American and slap the bacon on a plate with some paper towels and nuke it while I prepare the rest of the salad.
Another option would be to recruit a kitchen helper to do the bacon. I just want to make this easy for you so you don’t get too burned out on salad taking too long. In the old days when my kids were younger, I always had willing kitchen helpers. Now, these kids want to scroll on Instagram watching videos of other families making meals. Totally kidding. That never happens at my house. My children assist me joyfully at every moment of every day with nary a bad attitude. They’re not even allowed to know that Instagram exists until they’re 30, or something like that.
Anyway, give that leaf lettuce a thorough washing and a good shake or spin, then chop it into small, bite-size pieces. Now here’s where the Italian salad whisperer knowledge comes in. You first coat the lettuce with a lovely buttery layer of fine olive oil until it has just the right zip, tasting as you go. You need to channel your inner chef here. When the lettuce has just the right amount of olive oil, you’ll just know.
Then you sprinkle small amounts of the red wine vinegar, stirring and tasting, until it has just the right tang. We don’t like our salads to have a strong, pucker-up kind of vinegar flavor. We want more like a subtle zing.
Finally, you get out your salt and pepper grinder (if you don’t have one, I recommend getting one. I’m a big fan of this 2-in-1 kind) and then you grind a little, then taste, grind some more, then taste. You want a nice mildly salty taste. People nearly always underdo salt.
I’m known in these parts as “She Who Uses Much Salt.” That’s my native American name. Yet, I can never remember anyone complaining that I use too much salt (except that one time I accidentally used 3 Tbl when I was supposed to do 3 tsp).
The right amount of salt enhances all the other flavors and elevates them beautifully. You suddenly notice the richness of the oil, the sweetness of the lettuce, the gusto of the vinegar.
Now if you stop right there, you already have a really good salad. But to make it just a tad better, give the bacon a quick chop (crispy bacon is easier to chop than chewy so always cook bacon long enough if you plan to chop it) and sprinkle on the goat cheese and avocado.
Congrats! You just made a salad that would please any Sicilian grandmother.
Artichoke and Herb Salad
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