5 Brand-New Salads You Have to Try Before Summer's Over
Lettuce celebrate summer with the season's best produce!
Matt
One of the things we love most about salads is their versatility. Whether you're using a base of crunchy lettuce leaves, colorful microgreens or a mix of your favorite beans and grains, absolutely anything goes. Nowhere is this truer than during summer months, when produce is plentiful and you can even grill your ingredients. If you’re looking for a new way to elevate your salad this season, give these five new recipes from Food Network Kitchen a try. They’re packed full of seasonal ingredients like sweet corn, savory tomatoes, crisp cucumber and more to give you a fresh take on a cookout (or indoor picnic) must-have.
BLT Bean Salad (pictured above)
This creative recipe takes all the traditional fixings of a classic BLT sandwich — crispy bacon, toasted bread, juicy tomatoes and crisp romaine lettuce — and combines them with hearty cannellini beans to give you an irresistible salad is just 30 minutes. You’ll serve it with a homemade dressing made from pureed basil, parsley, dill, mayonnaise, yogurt and lemon juice that is so delicious you’ll want to use it as a topping on everything. It also makes a great dipper for French fries and chicken fingers, too.
Renee Comet
If you’re looking for a salad that’ll still taste as fresh a few days later as it did on the actual day you made it, look no further than this hearty recipe. Not only will your kale and cabbage last longer in the fridge than other greens, you can even make the salad one day in advance by packing your sliced cabbage, kale and beets in separate reusable bags and refrigerating them. To give this salad even more texture, you’ll top it with crunchy sliced almonds and toasted breadcrumbs. You’ll then finish it off with a light, yet tangy vinaigrette that’s made from a bright combination of garlic, vinegar, honey and shaved Parmesan cheese. The best part of all? You can even add in your favorite protein like grilled chicken, steak, tofu or shrimp to turn this into a delicious dinner salad!
Matt
Okay, okay, so we’ll be the very first ones to admit that this is technically a sandwich recipe; that being said, it’s filled with a zesty veggie-inspired take on classic chicken salad, so it counts as a salad in our book, too. To make the filling, you’ll mash together canned chickpeas with dill, capers, lemon juice, mustard, turmeric and mayonnaise. Make sure to leave some of the chickpeas chunky for some texture. You’ll then add the filling to four slices of whole wheat bread and top it with baby kale and toasted pepitas for a lovely bit of crunch. For a lower-carb option, skip the bread and simply dollop the chickpea mixture onto a bed of greens or other mixed veggies.
Teri Lyn Fisher
Though it feels like summer just started, it’ll quickly be over before we know it! Get the most out of its winding weeks with this flavorful panzanella salad. Not only will it give you an extra reason to fire up the grill — you’ll use it to add a smoky char to your sliced zucchini, corn, red onions, summer squash and sourdough bread — you’ll also put all that in-season produce you’ve been buying to good use.
Matt
Though cantaloupe and cucumber might seem like a strange combination, one bite of this ultra-refreshing salad will have you seeing they were meant to be together. You’ll use both, along with some fresh mint, cooked farro and sweet cherry tomatoes to make the base of this quintessential summer salad. You’ll then top it with crumbly feta cheese, some more mint and a tart vinaigrette made from red wine vinegar, shallots, chives and oil olive. If all that wasn’t enough to convince you to make it, this salad can also be made up to six hours in advance so you can focus more of your attention on your cookout or cook-in sides and mains.
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