Building a Great Summer Dinner Salad

Summer’s here in the northern hemisphere! This is the time of year when we hanker for a nice, refreshing salad at the end of the day – when we don’t feel like a big meal or working in a hot kitchen. I’m talking about more than just a side dish: more than just a bunch of greens tossed in dressing. I want a good dinner salad, one that not only satisfies the appetite but is also big on taste.

While many salad preferences are based on the foods of our youth, my own salad experiences in the Midwest farm country of the 1950s were hemmed in by a short growing season and limited availability of fresh salad ingredients. That’s when a “dinner salad” was likely heavy on potatoes or macaroni – or worse yet, Jell-O. Nowadays, making my own dinner salad is an opportunity to make use of fresh vegetables augmented by add-ins tossed together for flavor and protein.

The right balance

When building your dinner salad, decide what to use as a focus. Maybe it’s as simple as canned tuna or hard-boiled eggs, beans or chickpeas, or grains such as quinoa, tabouleh, or farro. Or maybe you want to grill some meat, fish, shrimp, or chicken. Then figure out what flavors, textures, and colors pair well with your main ingredients.

Chef and cookbook author Samin Nosrat writes that a delicious salad needs a balance of salt, fat, and acid as well as crunch and umami-rich add-ins for a flavor boost. For the salt portion, consider ingredients such as bacon, cheese, toasted pepitas, or olives, or the ingredients in your dressing, such as Worcestershire sauce. Fat could be comprised of cheese, eggs, avocado, or olive oil. As for acid, that’s your vinegar, lemon or lime juice, tomato, or mustard. As for crunch, that can come from lettuce, cucumbers, celery, toasted nuts, pita or taco chips, not to mention homemade toasted croutons. The umami comes with artichoke hearts, bleu cheese, or capers, for example. One of our go-to additions these days that fits all these categories is quick-pickled red onions, which seem to go well with everything. Just slice a red onion and cook it for 10 minutes with ½ cup water, ½ cup white or cider vinegar, and ½ teaspoon or so of sugar and salt. Then drain, cool, and add to your salad.

Depending upon the spices that you might use on your protein for flavor, you can begin to shape the rest of your salad. A Southwestern rub might inspire you to concoct a taco salad, while fresh oregano from the herb garden might point to a Greek salad with Kalamata olives and feta cheese.

The right dressing

Does your salad require richness, brightness, or something creamy? Beets and cucumbers might be better with a creamy green goddess; a garden lettuce salad would be best with a light rice wine vinaigrette. And how about a creamy Caesar salad – lemony anchovy vinaigrette with Parmesan cheese, perhaps with sliced grilled steak, chicken, fish or shrimp. Or taco salad: It’s easy to make with crumbled grilled hamburger, crunchy romaine, chopped tomatoes, and pickled onions, topped with a salsa-style vinaigrette and some taco chips for extra crunch. Another suggestion is a Southeast Asian approach with a peanut-lime dressing combining fish sauce, rice wine vinegar, soy sauce, grated ginger, peanut butter, sliced jalapeno, garlic, and oil. Serve that over sliced cucumbers, soba noodles, and romaine, perhaps with grilled pork or chicken.

The possibilities are endless; these are just a few ideas. What are your tips for making a great summer dinner salad?

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