1,562 easy and fully explained recipes, with +66K photos and 78 videos

This site uses only a few technical cookies necessary for its operation. By continuing to browse, you accept their use.
To find out more...

The infinite variety of salads

Making a salad for a meal, a few ingredients of your choice and a sauce to bind it all together is still one of the best ways to cook something really good quickly and simply.

And since there is often a "fresh" aspect with the vegetables in the ingredients, not only does it taste good, but it's also healthy.
Add to that the fact that if the salad is big enough, it can be the only dish of the meal, perhaps preceded by a small dessert, and why not, accompanied by a good glass of wine, especially in summer.

There are so many advantages to making salads, and there is also an aspect that deserves to be noticed: the infinite variety of ingredients that can be added!
You can eat almost anything in a salad, and therefore put everything in it, or almost...

11 K 4.6/5 (15 reviews)

Keywords for this post:Salad Ingredients Dressing Variety Health

Last modified on: March 13^th 2021

For this post: Comment Follow Ask me a question Send to a friend

The infinite variety of salads

What is a salad?

Let's just say: one or more "things", foods, ingredients, cooked or raw, or both, rather cold but sometimes hot or warm, mixed and bound by a good vinaigrette sauce.
Of course, the first one is the salad, green : green salad, herbs if possible, and vinaigrette sauce, classic, unwearable.
There are also the classics, often territorial: Niçoise, Alsatian, Lyonnaise, Piedmontese, tabbouleh, Caesar, ...
But it is very pleasant to go beyond and especially to have several ingredients, to vary the tastes, the colors and the textures.

An anecdote in passing, Gault et Millaut, the gastronomic critics, in their heyday when they first met Paul Bocuse, apparently refused to eat from his menu and asked him to "make us a dish that represents you". The chef made them a warm bean salad, and they (they later wrote) were completely blown away: super-simple, but sublime to eat.

What to put in a salad?

Of course, I'm not going to teach you how to make a salad, and we've already said almost everything about the principle, but here are a few ideas to, perhaps, rekindle your desire to make one.

The vegetables

They can all or almost all be eaten in salads, either cooked or raw, or both. There are the classics: carrots of course, tomatoes in season, raw beets, endives (especially at the moment),...
But also : raw cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, green cabbage, zucchini, radishes, mushrooms, cooked potatoes, avocado (yes it is a fruit, an exception here)...

Lentils and peas

They must be cooked, but they are also excellent in salads: rice, white or red beans, lentils, chickpeas, semolina, bulgur, quinoa...

Cooked meats

A salad is also an opportunity to use leftovers and in particular those of meats: white (poultry, a chicken carcass skinned for example, pork, grilled bacon, ...), see red (beef with a leftover roast), without forgetting the delicatessen ...

Fish, shellfish and crustaceans

This is also an opportunity to use leftovers: cubed fish, shrimps, mussels or other shellfish.

LeftoversSalads

are a great opportunity to recycle the leftovers in your fridge, those already mentioned, but also anything that is too small to make a single dish: 1 cooked potato, leftover pasta, a handful of dried fruit, 3 dueling radishes, 1 slice of ham, 1 buckwheat pancake, 1 hard-boiled egg, leftover omelette, cooked rice,... A real inventory, but all this, and many more, can be added to your salad.

But also

, Hard boiled eggs or boiled eggs, croutons, sliced or diced cheese, nuts (walnuts, almonds, cashews, hazelnuts...), cooked pasta.

Contrasts

Don't hesitate to mix in the same salad foods that are opposites such as cooked and raw, hot and cold, crunchy and soft, it always gives amazing results.
For example, try white beans (warm, melting), sliced avocado (cold, melting), slices of pink radish (cold, crunchy) and grilled croutons (hot, crunchy).

The sauces

As mentioned above, the most classic is the homemade vinaigrette sauce, the base, but it is also very interesting to consider more original sauces: remoulade or olive oil and lemon for example, or to "spice up" a classic, such as a vinaigrette with 1/2 teaspoon of Tabasco and 1 teaspoon of soy sauce.

Herbs

It's not that they are indispensable, but they are so effective that it would be a shame to do without them. They can all be used, alone or mixed, the classic parsley, chervil, chives, but also the less common, sage, lemon balm, tarragon...

You will have understood it, it is enough to pick in all that, or in all that one did not already evoke, to make one of these delicious salads which will sunnify your next meal.

With the kids

One last little thing, I've noticed, and maybe you have too, that kids are very sensitive to the creation of homemade recipes, that you have to name with them, with something fun for them.
Creating a salad with a particular mix, often a special one (that's all that was left in the fridge), but with a family name like "Salade de ...", creates a special bond with this dish, a dish that they will ask you for afterwards.
It worked with my kids 20 years ago, I bet it will work with yours :-), if you haven't done it already.

In summary: Salads, in their infinite variety, are a quick and easy way to make delicious meals.

Lasts posts

A tablet holder

Perhaps you too cook by consulting your recipe on a tablet or phone, and putting it down on your worktop? It's practical, but not the best solution. Here's a look at how you can make an inexpensive, almost universal stand.
March 14^th 20265465

Pre-calibrated pastry dough

When making pie dough (shortbread, shortcrust, sweet...), it's always a good idea to make a lot at once, and then divide it into pieces, which you can freeze. I've already pointed out the mistake not to make, which is to form a ball before freezing. It's difficult to roll out afterwards because...
March 9^th 20268625

Butter vs. grease

We often read in a recipe where a pastry is put into a mould that, just before pouring, the mould should be buttered or greased. But what's the difference between these 2 terms?
December 1^st 20252,9525

Getting out of the fridge early

Very often when you're cooking, you need to take food or preparations out of the fridge, to use them in the recipe in progress. There's nothing tricky about this: you just take them out of the fridge and use them, usually immediately, in the recipe. But is this really a good method?
November 24^th 20251,9085

Who's making the croissants?

When you look at a bakery from the outside, you naturally think that in the bakery, the bakers make the bread, and in the laboratory, the pastry chefs make the cakes. It's very often like that, with each of these professions having quite different ways of working, but sometimes there's also one...
November 23^th 20251,738

See all posts Random post RSS feeds

Other pages you may also like

Should I believe my oven?

Can you really trust your oven? This is an important question as we are always tempted to take the temperature indicated as gospel truth and, unfortunately, this is rarely very precise. .
July 4^th 201133 K4.6

How to zest a fruit?

You will have no doubt noticed that many recipes call for the zest of citrus fruit. The zest is that outer layer of the skin which adds so much flavour to a dish. There are many different ways to peel off the zest and various tools are available. Here is a summary of the “dos and don'ts” of...
November 5^th 201348 K3.8

Raising (or leavening) agents

When we want to make a dough or batter rise when baking, either in patisserie or bread-making, we need to use a raising agent or leavening agent, one of which is called leaven. In the context of baking, a raising agent is simply what "makes something rise". It is a substance which, when added to...
June 16^th 202158 K4.8

The mock CAP baker's certificate exam

The next instalment in my life as an apprentice baker at the French INBP professional school. I’m now halfway through training and it’s still as exciting as ever, and exhausting – but maybe I’m just getting old, or both… Anyway, a few days ago we had to go through the mock CAP exam. A sort...
May 1^st 201822 K4.4

The beautiful story of the croissants

As you may have already noticed, cooking, baking and pastry-making are full of stories or legends, usually very romantic, about this or that product or recipe. This is often the case for named recipes, for example tarte tatin, peach melba, paris-brest and many others, but it also applies to very...
October 10^th 201820 K5