Salad

Yes, you'll be excited to dig in.

Breadcrumbs and croutons are great, but this ... is even better!

Because it's salad season.

Yes, we all know that lettuce is the foundation of most salads, but c’mon — lettuce has so much more to give! I love that you don’t have to use up a whole head at once — one head in the crisper drawer can be used in so many different ways over the course of days, so you won’t ever feel like you’re eating the same thing over and over again.

We tried three popular methods to find out which was best — and there was a clear winner.

Well, that sure frees up a lot of refrigerator space!

Take your pasta salad to the next level.

Remember this one step when making your salads from now on.

Save yourself the extra dishes.

We hear plenty about heirloom tomatoes and heirloom beansWe find the heirloom lettuce from Earthbound Organic to be especially good. In addition to the petite heads (left), they sell a mix of heirloom leaves. If you like a mix of crunchy and tender bites in your salad, you have to check it out.So, what is heirloom lettuce? And can fancy lettuce really taste that much better than a head of romaine? Yes, actually.

Cucumbers are far more versatile than you might imagine. Their mild, slightly sweet flavor makes them the perfect palate for most any flavor–Asian, Latin American, Middle Eastern, you name it!Here are a few of our favorite ways to use up summer cucumbers while they’re still fresh and crunchy. What are yours?Make Pickles. It’s not nearly so hard to make pickles as you might imagine since the majority of the work comes if you want to can them for long-term storage.

Jazz up your salad bowl with one of these tasty greens.

This hack couldn't be easier and takes just seconds.

Grandma did it, and so should you.

Courtesy of Daphne Oz's grandmother.

Here are a few tips we're borrowing from the French for taking salad out of side-dish territory and making it the main event.

It made me an advocate for homemade dressings once again.

It might seem surprising, but it really makes sense!

According to a now-viral TikTok video by @nutritionbabe, if you hold your romaine upright and smash the bottom against your countertop, you’ll end up with perfectly cut lettuce.

Learn how to make even a simple pile of greens sing.

It really does make everything taste better.

A bitter green you'll actually love.

A complete guide to making better, bolder salads this season.

I'll never make a salad without it again.

Don't throw them out.

If you only have time to do one thing, make it this.

It's just three ingredients dumped into a mason jar and shaken, but it's pure genius.

Just a bit mellows out all of the flavors so that each can shine through.

Say so long to soggy cukes.

One mom finally found a solution to getting her kids to eat their salads — by making them fun.

Make it a little fancier without actually trying any harder.

Caesar salad is the emperor of summer salads. Cool romaine gets tossed with a creamy, tangy, Parmesan-laced dressing and epitomizes what we both love and hate about simple salads (side-eye at you, wedge salad). While this salad seems simple, there are at least a dozen ways to make a mediocre Caesar salad. Avoid the following when assembling Caesars for your next summer soirée.

Repeat after me: “No more boring lettuce salads.” This summer, let’s challenge ourselves to go beyond our usual plates of mixed greens. Pick up some greens at the farmers market that you’ve never tried before. Swap your usual vinaigrette for something with some real pizzazz. Maybe even give those greens a quick sauté on the stovetop — warm lettuce salad? Why not!

If you serve a salad at Thanksgiving, its final preparation can get lost in the last-minute shuffle of cooking, carving, and getting everyone seated at the table. Many salads need to be dressed at the last minute so the tender greens don’t wilt, but on Thanksgiving or at a dinner party there’s already enough to do without worrying about dressing the salad! I say it’s time to ditch those tender greens in favor of hearty greens that can be dressed early.

Elizabeth’s post the other week on having salad for dinner reminded us of another favorite addition to the simple salad: fresh fruit. We find that a handful of berries or a diced apple transforms an otherwise ordinary bowl of leafy greens into something we can’t wait to dig into!Most fresh fruits add a sweet-tart note to other flavors in a savory salad. They pair well with toasted nuts and make an interesting texture contrast to raw vegetables.

“Resting time” in recipes is the bane of my existence. I’m a big fan of instant gratification, and I’m constantly forgetting to leave time for things like letting the meat rest or waiting for the cake to be completely cool before attempting to frost it. My puddings are always full of little fingerprints because I’m constantly poking them to see if they’re set yet, even though the recipe says they’ll need another three hours.

Of all the annoying traits a person can have, not coming to the table when they say they will is one of the worst. That happens constantly at my house. When I do the cooking I’ll let everyone know when the food is ready, and they’ll say they are coming. Then I’ll toss the salad and take it to the table, and no one will be there.

For most of my life, I thought I hated salads, but it turns out I just really don’t like most salad dressings. For years I tried to eat salads, only to take a few bites before giving up and leaving an over-dressed mess of goopy leaves on my plate. With the right dressing, however, salads are one of my favorite things to eat now, and making a dressing that suits my own tastes is extremely easy to do at home.

Pasta salad, when assembled correctly, is sublime. A great pasta salad is the star of any backyard barbecue or picnic potluck. All too often, though, it is subject to mediocrity, thanks to too much mayo, squishy pasta, and not enough salt. Don’t make these common mistakes! Let this be the year you master the perfect pasta salad. The wrong pasta type or size can make pasta salad soggy, slimy, or just plain hard to eat.

There are innumerable cheeses that deserve a singular spotlight, the strong, oh-so-uniquely flavored cheeses that don’t like to share the stage with others, so formidable that they’re best enjoyed on their own, without unnecessary, condimental fanfare. But what about a cheese whose merit, more than anything else, lies in its ability to complement other foods? Here, an intro to ricotta salata, the saltier, aged version of its fresher cohort.

I like keeping a salad night my meal plan, but don’t want a dinner that will leave me hungry an hour later. There are plenty of main-dish salad recipes out there (we wrote about some of our favorites in this post), but often I want just a simple green salad — with one or two extra things to make it more hearty. Here are seven quick additions from the pantry that always do the trick.

You’ve heard us say it again and again: always cook pasta in a large amount of well-salted boiling water until al dente. But when it comes to pasta saladsFor pasta destined for a picnic salad, we like to do two things:1. Cook it in even more heavily salted water.2. Cook it just a little beyond al dente. When cooking pasta for salad, we usually double the amount of salt we normally put in the pasta water, adding roughly 4 tablespoons of salt for 4 quarts of water.

What is it about a chopped salad that’s irresistible? If there’s one on a restaurant menu, I’ll almost always order it — either for the fact that I can scoop up perfectly proportioned bites with every ingredient represented or that they’re so pleasingly organized. As for what makes a good one, I have a few ideas. This isn’t one of those salads you can just pile some greens, veggies, and your favorite toppings on a plate and dive in.

We think of adding basil to a salad when we’re making a caprese salad. But it’s delicious chopped up with lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers, and whatever else you’ve got—a little zing that elevates a basic salad to something special…We don’t have a basil plant growing in or near our house, so we buy big bunches of basil from the market. They’re hard to use up before the leaves start to wilt and turn brown.

For many years I worked in overnight retail management. Working odd hours is rough to begin with, but having something fresh for lunch at 2 a.m. was tricky, so we turned to salads — they were easy to make, quick to throw together, and always left us with a fresh burst of energy. Here are some tips I learned along the way to help you efficiently prep a variety of salad lunches on Sunday.

Croutons are so yesterday. According to to Evan Kleiman and Russ Parsons on this past week’s episode of Good Food, buttery and crunchy breadcrumbs are totally where it’s at.These two were as giddy as school kids as they described tossing breadcrumbs into green salads. In Kleiman’s words, “Sometimes people have problems with breadcrumbs: they’re too big or they’re too hard.

Jessica Goldman Foung of Sodium Girl has an unusual dilemma, for a young and otherwise healthy woman: She can eat almost no sodium. She is on a mission to make low-sodium eating delicious — and today she offers her best tips on dressing a salad without salt, gluten, or other allergens.Let me ask you this question: What are three things you’re carrying in your bag this instant? Now let me make this guess: You didn’t answer salad dressing. Right?

If the only time you think of pulling that jar of balsamic out of the cupboard is when it’s time to make a salad, you’re missing out. This sweet and tangy vinegar is one of my favorite secret ingredients, and I’ve found all sorts of ways that its presence will perk up my everyday cooking. To Finish Soups and Sauces: Balsamic and ripe summer tomatoes have a well-known affinity for one another.

Teff, an edible seed known for its high nutrition and gluten-free, whole grain status, is a rising star among people concerned with healthy eating. But not everyone enjoys the texture of teff porridge or has the time to make injera, a spongy flat bread used in Ethiopian cooking. If this sounds like you, you may be interested in this simple technique for using teff as a garnish for salads instead!

Q: I went a little crazy at Costco and bought six heads of romaine lettuce. Three days of salads later, I’m wondering how to use this up before it goes bad. We have tried roasting the romaine which was delicious. What other ideas do you have for using up a lot of lettuce? Sent by Beth Editor: Beth, here are a few more ideas for using lettuce: → Help! Ways to Use Lettuce Besides Salads and Sandwiches? Readers, do you have any suggestions for using up a lot of romaine lettuce?

Does the kind or shape of pasta really matter for pasta salad? In theory, you can make pasta salad with any kind of pasta that you want, but here are a couple of things to think about so that you make the best choice possible. While fresh pasta is delicious, its more delicate nature means that it isn’t a great choice for pasta salads.

I honestly can’t remember the last time my fridge was yogurt-less. Greek yogurt is great for breakfast parfaits and smoothies, and a spoonful of this essential ingredient is also the perfect way to add creaminess (without the actual cream!) to salad dressings. Here are five of our favorite salad dressings that are made more magical with Greek yogurt.

I’m always looking for ways to get more produce into my diet. Whether it’s keeping a crudité platter in the fridge, adding cooked carrots to a sweet afternoon snack, or swapping spiraled zucchini for noodles, I’ll use any trick I can to fill my days with lots of vegetables. Here’s my favorite new way to swap out starch for greens in my lunchtime routine — turn a classic sandwich into a salad!

I resolved to pack a lot more vegetables into my meals this year, and an obvious assistant in this goal is the omnipresent lunch salad. There’s only one problem: salads are cold. And when I’m cold too, shivering at my desk with my hands wrapped around a mug of tea, the last thing I want is a bowl of chilly greens. But there are a few easy tricks to warm up a salad, and I’ve been using these to help me eat (and love) my greens all winter long.

We’ve all encountered a wimpy bowl of greens with a few slices of cucumber and a piece of tomato, trying to pass as a salad, at some point or another. Forget satisfying — that’s not even appetizing, and it gives salads everywhere a bad name. A good salad is a wonderful and glorious thing. It has a place as an appetizer, side dish, go-to weekday lunch, and, when made right, it can even hold its own as dinner.

It’s easy to eat more salads and greens as the weather warms up. You might crave something cool and crisp, or the CSA you joined is kicking into high gear and loading you up with lettuces and greens. Do you know the best ways to wash, dry, and store your greens? A little how-to can help make prep easier, plus extend the life of your produce. Here are our best tips!

Summer means lots of outdoor meals and gatherings, and it also means that potato salad starts showing up at BBQs, potlucks, parties, and camping meals. The delicious, classic potato salad combination of potatoes and creamy mayonnaise will never go out of style, but sometimes we may crave a lighter version, especially when it’s being served next to heavier dishes, like ribs or burgers.

The other night I ate one of my favorite restaurant meals: a finely chopped arugula and radicchio salad with tiny, crispy-yet-melting bits of fried onions, and paper-thin shards of sharp cheese. It’s a fabulous salad, but it’s one I’ve never been able to recreate at home. Unlike many restaurant dishes, which I feel can be recaptured at home with a little detective work, salads can just taste so much better when you’re out.

I cringe whenever I order a salad and it arrives with a pile of raw, crunchy onions. As much as I love their spicy bite, sometimes it’s just way too intense — plus I feel like I have dragon’s breath for the rest of the day. There’s an easy way to deal with this, though — one that doesn’t really require any extra effort on your part!

Q: I made a salad dressing a couple of days ago from lime juice and zest, olive oil, shallots, garlic, and cilantro. I used some on a salad and stored the rest in a Mason jar in the fridge. Today it’s solid on the top and liquid on bottom — it that the olive oil? Is it safe to eat? If so, how do I make it into a dressing again? Shaking the jar is doing nothing. Sent by Gail Editor: Don’t fret.