Simple Salad Secrets

It’s the season for salad greens. In the early part of the spring, lettuce overwhelms my refrigerator. Not many vegetables can be harvested in early spring, so we make the most of those that can. We grow multiple types of lettuce, spinach, arugula, and kale. I love to mix them up and serve salads every night at dinner. If you’ve followed this website or my Instagram page for long, you know that I’m a minimalist prep person. I prioritize getting dinner on the table fast with as few dishes as possible over pretty much everything else. But I also know that salads are the thing my family will skip if they aren’t tasty. So here’s the simplest hacks I have for making good salads.

Keep Lettuce Ready

I harvest lettuce in the mornings using the cut-and-come-again method. I immediately wash and store the greens either in my salad spinner or a 1/2 gallon mason jar. This way, I always have crisp greens ready.

The Easiest Version of Salad

There are certain ingredients I always have available: kosher salt, coarse pepper, lemons, flavored vinegar, and olive oil. With these few ingredients, I can make the easiest salad. Often if I don’t have a a good salad dressing on hand, I follow these steps to make an incredibly flavorful salad:

• Drizzle a little olive oil over the lettuce and mix it in with tongs
• Sprinkle kosher salt and coarse pepper over the salad
• Squeeze a fresh lemon over it
• Add whatever add-in (see below) I have readily available

The Easiest Formula for Make-Ahead Dressings

I also keep the following ingredients on hand so that I can make an easy salad dressing that goes with the main course any night of the week.

• 1 whole shallot or 2 cloves of garlic
• 1/4 red or white onion
• Coarse pepper and salt
• 1 cup oil (for most salads, I use olive oil. But certain oils–like sesame oil–can be blended in with avocado oil, peanut oil, or olive oil to make a more flavorful dressing. If we have warm, high-quality bacon oil, I’ll also sub out about 1-2 Tablespoons of that.
• 1/2 cup acid (Any combination of the following: lime juice, apple cider vinegar, white wine vinegar, lemon juice, Bragg’s liquid aminos, orange juice).
• 1 T sweetener: I prefer honey or maple juice, but you could also use regular sugar.

I add the first three ingredients to the bottom of a mason jar. then add the rest. Put the lid on and shake it up well. I like to prep in advance so the acid can soften and sort-of pickle the shallots and onions.

The Add-Ins I Always Keep

I keep a handful of “add-ins” readily available to add to lettuce with either homemade dressing or just to add in to the simple salad mix.

• Hardy Items: Pumpkin seeds, pistachios, walnuts, croutons, sunflower seeds
• Fruit or Vegetables: Standard fare like baby tomatoes, bell peppers, and onions, but also mandarin oranges, strawberries, dried fruit, sun-dried tomatoes
• Cheese: Shredded cheddar cheese and parmesan cheese are ever-present in our refrigerator

Sure, we also have really specific fancy salads that we make. But these are the things we have in our cabinet pretty much all the time that we throw together however we see fit most nights in the spring or fall when lettuce is exploding.