216 recipes. Page 4 of 9
Salad recipes with vegetables, fruit, and grains
Thick slices of dotori-muk (a mild, faintly bitter acorn jelly) are folded into lettuce, perilla leaves and cucumber dressed with soy sauce and vinegar. Chilled before slicing, the jelly has a firmer bounce.
Pressed for 20 minutes and seared until golden on each side, the tofu goes onto the salad still warm, a crisp-edged contrast to cool baby greens, cucumber and cherry tomatoes. The soy sauce, lemon and sesame oil dressing brings enough salt and acidity that the tofu itself needs no separate seasoning. Only the vegetables get dressed, with the tofu sitting on top so its browned surface stays dry until the first bite.
Firm tofu is seared in a dry pan until golden, then dressed with yuja-cheong, a Korean citron marmalade, mixed with soy sauce, vinegar and olive oil. The citron peel gives a faint bitterness and a fragrance that soy sauce alone never brings to plain tofu. Yuja has been grown on Korea's southern coast, around Goheung and Namhae, since the Joseon era. Tofu that still holds water thins the dressing and mutes that fragrance. Thinly sliced onion and baby greens add crunch on top. Serve it within 2 hours, while the tofu still holds its firm shape.
Plump, springy edamame and soft, creamy avocado make the main contrast in the bowl. A dressing of soy sauce, lime juice and sesame oil gives it a light, salty-tart Asian profile, and cucumber and cherry tomatoes add crunch and juice. The only cooking is a few minutes of blanching the beans. Cool them completely before mixing; warm beans turn the avocado mushy. The avocado gets a little lime juice the moment it is cut to slow browning, and the finished salad has a better texture served cold.
This egg salad is wrapped in romaine leaves rather than bread, and only a tablespoon of mayonnaise goes in; Greek yogurt makes up the rest. Finely chopped celery gives it crunch, and Dijon mustard a little heat.
Nopales, flat cactus pads from Mexico, release a slippery juice like okra when boiled, yet keep a pleasantly chewy, crisp bite once cooked. Sharp lime juice and grassy cilantro play against the cactus's mild green flavor, with tomato and onion tossed through. Prep starts with gloves and a knife, scraping the tiny spines off both faces and the edges. In Mexico it goes alongside tacos, grilled meat or beans.
Cooked chickpeas, onion and parsley are pulsed into a coarse mixture, shaped into small balls and baked or pan-fried into falafel that sit over romaine, tomato and cucumber under a tahini sauce. Done well, the falafel are deep golden and crisp outside but still moist within, a clear contrast to the raw vegetables. Lemon juice cuts the richness of the sesame-based tahini. No deep fryer is involved: the oven or a lightly oiled pan does the job.
Chewy farro, an old Italian wheat that holds its shape when boiled, carries oven-roasted pumpkin and red onion browned at the edges. Bitter arugula keeps the roasted sweetness from going one-note, and roughly crushed almonds add crunch. Balsamic vinegar and olive oil make up the whole dressing, light enough to leave each ingredient tasting like itself.
Oven-crisped pita chips anchor a Levantine vegetable salad, and sumac, a tart red spice, tints the tomato, cucumber, radish and romaine with color and sourness. Layering sumac with lemon, whose sourness is of a different kind, gives the dressing a fuller acidity. The chips are added just before eating, since they soften fast in the dressing, and each bite then has crisp centers and slightly soaked edges.
Freekeh starts as young green wheat that is fire-roasted on the stalk, then threshed and dried, which leaves a faint smoky note in every grain. Boiled, it stays chewy and keeps its shape among the vegetables. Parsley and cilantro, chopped down to their tender stems, lift the smoke with fresh green aroma, and lemon juice with olive oil forms the only dressing. Herbs stirred into hot grain lose their scent, so the freekeh is spread out to cool until just lukewarm first. An hour's rest after mixing lets the dressing soak into the grains.
Apple, banana, strawberries and blueberries cut into bite-size pieces get folded into plain yogurt sweetened with honey, whose soft tang sits over the fruit's sweetness. Lemon juice slows browning on the cut apple and freshens the finish, while walnuts toasted briefly in a dry pan bring crunch to an otherwise soft bowl.
The name means 'mixed' in Javanese, and that is how gado-gado is eaten across Indonesia: blanched cabbage and bean sprouts, boiled potato, seared tofu and halved eggs, all stirred into a thick peanut sauce. Street vendors pound roasted peanuts in a mortar; this version shortcuts with peanut butter loosened with soy sauce, palm sugar and lime juice, which still lands nutty, sweet and tart at once. With potato, tofu and eggs on the plate, it eats like a full meal rather than a side.
Peanut butter loosened with lime juice and soy sauce turns a plate of blanched cabbage, bean sprouts, potato, seared tofu and egg into one Indonesian meal. Each vegetable gets its own blanching so the cabbage keeps its crunch while the sprouts only just soften. Everything sits in separate sections rather than tossed together, and the sauce is added at the last moment. Every forkful ends up a different mix of soft, crisp and nutty.
Korean potato salad leaves small lumps in the mash on purpose, putting soft potato and floury bits in the same bite. A little sugar in the mayonnaise gives it the sweet, creamy profile that separates it from Western potato salad, though it shares roots with Japanese potato salad. Diced ham is browned to render some fat, and salted, squeezed cucumber keeps the bowl from turning watery after chilling. An hour in the fridge lets the seasoning settle evenly. It goes on the table as a banchan side dish or between slices of bread as a sandwich filling.
Gamtae, a fine Korean seaweed, crumbles between your fingers into flakes that cover the shrimp and avocado with a light sea flavor. Lime juice, soy sauce and a little honey cut through the richness of the avocado, while red onion soaked in cold water adds crunch without the sharp bite. Blanching the shrimp for only 2 minutes and chilling them straight away keeps them springy rather than dry.
Coarse grating on a bamboo oni-oroshi or rough grater leaves the daikon in ragged, crunchy bits instead of a watery pulp. The salted daikon gets just one light squeeze, since grating it fine or wringing it hard would erase both that roughness and its juiciness. Small fish cured first in salt and then vinegar are folded through a sweet miso-vinegar dressing in this Ibaraki-style namasu. The fish should already be gutted and scaled, and it stays cold while curing and after the dish is finished. Served straight away it has the sharpest crunch, while 15 minutes in the fridge lets the miso and vinegar soak in more evenly.
Chickpeas roasted at 200 degrees until crisp play the part of croutons in this bowl of kale, red cabbage, carrot and cucumber. The gochujang dressing, rounded out with maple syrup and rice vinegar, brings heat, sweetness and acidity at once and covers the grassy taste of the raw vegetables. Massaging the kale by hand for a minute softens its tough fibers and takes the edge off its bitterness.
Shredded chicken breast and cabbage cut thinner than 2mm are tossed in a sweet-sour dressing of fish sauce, lime juice and sugar. The thick cabbage core is cut out before slicing because it stays tough in the salad. Fish sauce brings salt and savoriness to the lean chicken, lime brings sharpness, and raw cabbage and carrot do the crunching. Poached chicken needs to cool completely before it is pulled apart along the grain. Shredding it hot squeezes out the juices and leaves it dry. Cilantro and roasted peanuts scattered over the top add fragrance and a nutty crunch.
Thin slices of lotus stem stay crunchy, while shrimp split lengthwise open up a wider surface for the fish sauce dressing to soak into. The vinegar soak at the start removes the astringent aftertaste of the stem; skip it and no amount of dressing hides it. Leave the stems in much past 10 minutes, though, and their own aroma fades as well. Salty, sour and sweet hit together, with cilantro on top, in the style of a Vietnamese goi salad. Resting the tossed salad for 5 minutes or more lets the dressing reach into the shredded carrot and the shrimp.
Springy canned sea snails (golbaengi) are tossed with cucumber, onion and scallion in a hot, sour and sweet sauce of gochujang, chili flakes, vinegar and sugar, a classic drinking snack in Korea. A 5-minute soak in cold water takes the harsh edge off the onion so it blends into the sauce. The snails drain well in a sieve first, as leftover brine from the can thins the sauce until it no longer clings. The plate goes to the table right away: once dressed, the salt starts drawing water out of the vegetables. Spooned over thin somyeon noodles, it becomes golbaengi somyeon, with the noodles soaking up the dressing.
Smoked duck brings fat and smoke, and this salad answers with a sharp soy-vinegar dressing spiked with chili oil plus thin slices of Korean pear that burst with juice. The duck gets only 3 minutes over medium heat, skin side down, to render its fat without drying out the meat. Gosari, the bracken fern Koreans usually eat as a seasoned side dish, is blanched for just 1 minute so it loses any off flavor but keeps its chewy bite. The pear is tossed with a little dressing as soon as it is sliced, which slows browning, and meets the greens only at serving time. Red chard and finely shredded cabbage give the plate a crisp base.
Dried persimmon cut into rounds shows a chewy, almost jammy center that contrasts with soft spoonfuls of ricotta. Bitter chicory and peppery arugula balance its concentrated sweetness, and walnuts and pine nuts toasted in a dry pan add a warm, nutty smell. When the persimmon is especially sweet, a little more balsamic vinegar brings the plate back into balance.
Grapefruit segments and a yuja marmalade dressing layer two kinds of citrus, one juicy and tart, the other floral. Thin ribbons of shiso, with their minty, herbal edge, tidy up any fishiness from the shrimp, while cucumber and radish supply crunch. Served cold, every element tastes sharper.
Tomatoes and cucumber stay in big, rough chunks, so each bite keeps its own juice and crunch. Sweet bell pepper, briny olives and salty feta layer on top, and the oil and red wine vinegar are tossed in only until the vegetables look glossy. Thin slices of red onion keep its sharpness from covering the tomato, olives and feta. In Greece the feta traditionally sits on the salad as a single slab rather than crumbled; broken off bit by bit at the table, it mixes with the olive oil on the plate and becomes the dressing. Rough tossing crushes the tomatoes and leaves a pool of watery juice underneath.