The Best Vegetable Salad

The Best Vegetable Salad. image: Essy Roz

The Best Vegetable Salad. image: Essy Roz

This salad is THE salad,
My star!
Making a good and tasty salad is art.
A balanced salad with great dressing that knows exactly when to give your bite a little kick and when to fondle and wrap it.

Chopped salad is a classic which you can find plenty of recipes for.
This time I decided to share with you my formula for the best vegetable salad.

In this post there are countless options,
Starting with the salad’s content, through the dressing to the toppings.
Each time you can make your salad differently,
If you follow the basic principles of this post, you’ll get an amazing bowl.

It can be a big indulging meal for one or a couple,
It can be a fresh treat in the center of the table,
It can blend into a Saturday or holiday meal,
And it can be anything you want it to be –
Crunchy, fresh, tart, sweet and with a kick.

The formula to my indulgent salad is waiting for you right here,
And it’ll open the door to a wide variety of salads.

Happy salad days to us all 🙂

The Best Vegetable Salad. image: Essy Roz

The Best Vegetable Salad. image: Essy Roz

The Best Vegetable Salad. image: Essy Roz

The Best Vegetable Salad

Ingredients: suitable for a large family size salad

Vegetables:
Any vegetable you choose would work, the trick is in the way you cut the vegetables. Choose any method you feel like – sometimes I make an elephant salad, big and roughly cut and sometimes I choose a chopped salad where all of the vegetables are chopped the same way. Whatever you choose would be perfect 🙂

My salad has:

• Tomato
• Kohlrabi
• Cucumber
• ½ red onion- can also use white onion (Notice the onion trick, coming up) 
• Fennel
• Hand full of greens – any green you choose like parsley / cilantro / mint / dill / basil

Dressing:

• ¼ cup olive oil
• A little lemon zest 
• 1 whole lemon juice (Please note if your lemon is large sized use only half of it, taste to see if there’s a need for more, and add gradually)
• ½ teaspoon salt (Depends on how much salt you like)
• Pinch of white / black finely ground pepper
• ¼ teaspoon garlic powder
• A dry herb of some kind like oregano (It’s amazing in a salad and also excellent for the immune system of all family members) / parsley / cilantro / mint
• 1 tablespoon maple syrup (For those of you who like sweet salads)

For crunchiness:
Can use any type of nut or seed you like. I recommend raw seeds and enjoy wonderful nutritional values. Of course also roasted ones will fit the salad beautifly.

I used pumpkin seeds – Can be substituted for chia seeds, sunflower seeds, flax seeds (Ground or whole), sesame black / white etc.

Steps: This is the most important part. Pay attention to the order of the steps – it would give a wonderfully balanced salad. The vegetables in this salad will be wrapt in a dressing that hugs them and will attach them all together to a dreamy bite.

1. We will begin with the dressing, yes you read it right, we will make the dressing on the bottom of the salad bowl and add all cut vegetables on top of it. Put all the dressing ingredients in the bottom of the bowl, olive oil, lemon zest and juice, salt, pepper, garlic powder, dry herb and maple syrup and mix it all together to a uniform bright dressing.
2. The first vegetable going into the bowl is the onion. Chop the onion into tiny cubes and spread them on the dressing hiding on the bottom of the bowl. Onions can often be spicy and strong when added to a salad but this way the onion will go through a speed up pickling process, while we cut the rest of the vegetables, and will devote itself to all of the dressing’s ingredients. This action will make the spiciness disappear and it’ll turn sweetish with a subtle flavor and will make the salad pleasant and relaxed.
3. Continue with cutting the vegetables we chose, remember- pick a cutting size you like and use it for all the vegetables in the salad. If you chose a chopped salad- chop all vegetables the same way, if you chose an elephant salad cut them roughly. Fun trick: When I make elephant salad, I cut the vegetables in interesting different shapes, and this way I get the children a lot more engaged, they enjoy the experience with a good and intriguing bowl of salad.
4. Let’s get back to making the salad. I have made a chopped salad and I love it. Chop the vegetables into cubes, all the same size and put them in the salad bowl where the dressing and onion wait and will all come together. The vegetables can be put into groups and mixed in the end or just spread them in the bowl one on top of each other (Take a peek at the pictures). At the end spread the crunchy topping.
5. Once all the vegetables are cut comes the most fun part, It’s important to do this in proximity to serving the salad. Mix the salad passionately, let the dressing cover all the vegetables and make all the content of the bowl unite. At this stage you can serve the salad exactly as it is or drip 2-3 tablespoons of wonderful raw tahini.

Serve with love and place in the middle of the table 🙂

A little extra from me:

• Can prepare the salad about 2-3 hours prior to dinner, just make sure to mix it only a moment prior to serving.
• Any vegetable you choose would work- If you chose carrot or beetroot, I recommend shredding them using a grater.
• The dressing can also be made in a jar, kept in the fridge and be used whenever you like. In this way the dressing could last for two weeks in the fridge.
• Dressing portions can be doubled so that you can enjoy it for a longer time.
• The dressing is amazing as a side to baked vegetables (Click here for the recipe) or in a rich quinoa lentil salad.

The sauce ingredients in the bottom of the salad bowl before the evening. image: Essy Roz

The sauce ingredients in the bottom of the salad bowl along with the onion cubes. image: Essy Roz

Put the vegetable cubes before mixing in a bowl (mix everything near serving). image: Essy Roz

The Best Vegetable Salad. image: Essy Roz