Salads

Crisp leaves, composed plates, slaws and dressings.

32 recipes

Broccoli-Bacon Salad

Broccoli-Bacon Salad

Broccoli-bacon salad is a fixture of American potlucks, summer cookouts, and church suppers, especially across the Midwest and South where it earned the affectionate nickname "broccoli crunch". Its origins sit somewhere in 1980s home cooking, when raw vegetable salads bound in creamy dressings became a casserole-era staple, and it has stuck around because the formula is so satisfying. Broccoli is treated like a salad leaf here rather than a hot vegetable, broken into bite-sized florets that stay assertively crunchy and grassy under the dressing. Crisp bacon adds smoke and salt, red onion brings a clean sharpness, sunflower seeds contribute a nutty crunch, and dried cranberries (or raisins, in older versions) drop little pockets of chewy sweetness across the bowl. The dressing is the secret. A glossy emulsion of mayonnaise, cider vinegar, and just enough sugar to round things out, it coats every floret without weighing them down. The salad is genuinely simple to make and improves with a short rest in the fridge, where the broccoli softens just slightly and absorbs the flavours of the dressing. It pairs wonderfully with grilled chicken, pulled pork, hamburgers, or a baked ham. Once you have made it, you understand why every American family seems to claim a version as their own.

30 minutes Serves6
Choban Salata (Azerbaijani Shepherd's Salad)

Choban Salata (Azerbaijani Shepherd's Salad)

The Azerbaijani version of the shepherd's salad that turns up in some form on every table from the Balkans to Persia, the bright herby counter to anything rich coming out of the kitchen. You dice tomatoes, cucumber and red onion to five-millimetre cubes (smaller than a typical chopped salad, almost a relish) and chop the herbs fine: dill, mint and tarragon, the tarragon being the move that distinguishes the Azeri version from its neighbours. Everything tosses together with olive oil, lemon juice and salt about fifteen minutes before serving, so the salt draws the tomato juice out and the salad relaxes into itself. Best the same day; the salad weeps if held overnight. Eat with grilled meat, with plov, with lavash, with whatever the main is.

15 minutes Serves4
Classic American Potato Salad

Classic American Potato Salad

Few dishes feel as woven into American summer as potato salad. It appears at backyard barbecues, church potlucks, and Fourth of July tables from Maine to Texas, and although every family insists their version is the only correct one, the bones are reassuringly consistent: waxy potatoes, hard-boiled eggs, a generous slick of mayonnaise, and the bright bite of mustard and pickle. The taste is creamy and cool, savoury with a gentle sweet-sour tang, punctuated by crisp celery and the sting of raw onion. It smells faintly of vinegar and paprika, like a 1950s deli counter on a hot afternoon. The texture is the real prize. Potatoes should be tender enough to yield to a fork but still hold their shape, so the salad reads as chunky rather than mashed. Difficulty is low, which is part of its charm. The only real technique is seasoning the warm potatoes so they drink in the vinegar before the mayo goes on, a small step that separates a flat salad from a great one. Make it the day before if you can. A night in the fridge lets the flavours marry, the onion mellow, and the dressing settle into every crevice, which is exactly what you want when you pull it out alongside burgers, pulled pork, or grilled chicken.

40 minutes Serves6
Ensaladang Talong (Grilled Eggplant Salad)

Ensaladang Talong (Grilled Eggplant Salad)

Long Asian aubergines char directly over a gas flame or hot grill until blackened all over and totally soft inside (poke through to test, no resistance). Cool for 10 minutes; peel away the charred skin (it slips off if cooked enough). Tear the flesh into 5 cm strips. Dress with diced tomato, thin-sliced red onion, fish sauce, white-cane vinegar and calamansi juice. Rest for 5 minutes to let the eggplant absorb the dressing. Serve room temperature.

27 minutes Serves4
Grilled Eggplant Salad

Grilled Eggplant Salad

A juicy room-temperature salad built around the smoky soft flesh of whole-roasted eggplant. The eggplant flavour anchors everything, mildly bitter, deeply smoky if you can blister the skin first, almost meaty in texture once scooped. Around it, finely chopped tomato and cucumber release their water and form a brothy dressing on the bottom of the bowl, sweetened slightly by the addition of a pinch of sugar and sharpened by black rice vinegar (Chinkiang, the malty, dark, slightly sweet variety, not the white-rice kind). Browned garlic in olive oil folds in last and carries the aroma. Easy to make and forgiving; the only step that requires care is roasting the eggplants long enough that the flesh is properly soft. Sits alongside polo or naan as a fresh, juicy counter to the heavier mains of the Uyghur table, and the kind of dish made every day in summer when eggplants are cheap and good in the Kashgar bazaars.

45 minutes Serves4
Horiatiki (Greek Village Salad)

Horiatiki (Greek Village Salad)

Tomatoes cut into thick wedges, cucumber peeled in stripes and cut into chunky rounds, red onion sliced thin and soaked in cold water 5 minutes (mellows the bite), green bell pepper sliced into rings, kalamata olives stoned or whole at the cook's discretion. Pile in a shallow bowl. A whole slab of feta sits on top, uncrumbled, dignified. Olive oil pours over, red-wine vinegar splashes, oregano sprinkles. Rest for 10 minutes before serving so the tomato juices mix with the oil.

15 minutes Serves4
Hot Cajun Potato Salad

Hot Cajun Potato Salad

A fiery Cajun-spiced potato salad, the kind of side dish that lifts a barbecue plate from good to memorable. You boil potatoes until just tender, then toss them while still warm in a mayo-based dressing built around Cajun heat: cumin, cayenne, smoked paprika, garlic and a measured spoon of garam masala for a deeper round-out. Hard-boiled eggs go in halved or quartered, sliced spring onions add a fresh allium note, and diced green chilli runs the heat across the back of the palate. Fresh herbs (parsley, dill or coriander) lift the lot. The salad sits best after an hour in the fridge for the flavours to settle. Eaten alongside grilled meat, fried chicken or a bowl of gumbo, with cold beer on the side.

35 minutes Serves6
Insalata Tricolore

Insalata Tricolore

The dish is an assembly, not a recipe. The four ingredients (tomato, mozzarella, basil, olive oil) all need to be the best you can afford, that's the whole technique. Tomatoes at peak ripeness, sliced 1 cm thick; mozzarella di bufala torn or sliced fresh from the brine; large whole basil leaves; cold-pressed extra-virgin olive oil. Layered on a plate alternating tomato slices with mozzarella, basil leaves tucked between, salt and pepper, finished with olive oil. Eaten with crusty bread.

10 minutes Serves4
Salade Niçoise

Salade Niçoise

Eggs hard-boil; cool; peel; quarter. New potatoes simmer in salted water until tender; drain; halve while warm; toss with a spoon of vinegar. Green beans blanch briefly; cool. Tomatoes wedge (the best you can find). The dressing: red wine vinegar, olive oil, Dijon mustard, crushed garlic, salt and pepper whisks together. Composition on a wide platter: a base of lettuce leaves (optional, traditional purists skip), then arranged piles of each cooked / prepared ingredient, wedges of tomato, halved eggs, halved potatoes, green beans, drained tuna chunks, niçoise olives, anchovy fillets. Drizzled with the dressing. Scattered with basil. Eaten with crusty bread.

45 minutes Serves4
Three-Bean Salad

Three-Bean Salad

Three-bean salad is one of those quietly enduring American classics that has been served at potlucks, church suppers, and Memorial Day cookouts since at least the 1950s. It rose to ubiquity through community cookbooks and the back of tinned-bean labels, and it has held on because it ticks every potluck virtue: it travels well, gets better as it sits, costs almost nothing, and feeds a crowd without fuss. The flavour is built on contrast. Soft, starchy beans soak up an assertive sweet-sour vinaigrette of cider vinegar, sugar, and oil, while crunchy green beans and the pungent bite of red onion keep the texture lively. There is a sweetness to it that can surprise first-timers, but that gentle candy-vinegar note is exactly the point. It is what defines this salad and what makes it sing alongside grilled meats, fried chicken, hot dogs, and barbecue. Difficulty is minimal, which is part of its old-fashioned charm. The only rules are to use good tinned pulses, rinse them thoroughly, and give the salad plenty of time in the fridge so the beans drink in the dressing. Made the day before, it transforms from a tidy mix of beans into something deeper and more harmonious, and it will keep happily for days, making it one of the most cookout-friendly sides you can have ready in advance.

20 minutes Serves8
Watermelon-Feta Salad

Watermelon-Feta Salad

Watermelon and feta sounds, on paper, like a culinary trick that should not work. It came to prominence in the United States through chefs influenced by eastern Mediterranean and Greek traditions, where briny cheese paired with sweet fruit has been quietly understood for centuries. By the early 2000s it was a staple of American summer entertaining, gracing magazine covers and barbecue spreads from California to the Hamptons, and it has earned its place because the contrast is so beautifully balanced. The flavour is built on three opposing notes pulling against each other: the candied sweetness of ripe watermelon, the salty, almost sheepy tang of crumbled feta, and the green, cooling sting of fresh mint. A squeeze of lime and a slow trickle of peppery olive oil tie it all together, while finely sliced red onion adds a sharp savoury bite that keeps the salad from leaning too sweet. There is no cooking involved, so success depends entirely on ingredient quality. The watermelon must be properly ripe, deep red and heavy for its size, and the feta should be the real Greek kind packed in brine, not the dry crumbled supermarket variety. Difficulty is essentially zero, but timing matters. Assemble this just before serving, because watermelon weeps quickly once cut and salted, turning the bowl pink and watery if left to sit.

15 minutes Serves6