Salads aren't boring
You're just not good at making them.
Salads sometimes get a bad rap, but I have to admit something: I unapologetically and unironically love salad. I grew up in a salad with most meals family, and as an adult, I eat salad for (or with) a handful of meals a week. I love that they’re endlessly customizable and because they largely depend on what I have on hand, no two salads are alike. It’s a meal I look forward to and never tire of.
The biggest complaint I hear about salads is that they’re boring and sad, but I am not sure those people have ever had a good salad. Store bought dressings are usually not great and pre-bagged lettuce can leave much to be desired. Good salads demand bold dressings, a variety of textures, and a striking blend of vegetables to make them interesting and delicious.
When I make a salad, I generally follow a set of “rules” that guide me toward salad greatness. Rules that are meant to be broken and adapted to your tastes and mood. Rules that become so second nature that you’ll wonder why you ever bought dressing.
Build out your core vinegar collection. Balsamic and red wine vinegar are essential, but a good apple cider or rice wine vinegar can take you pretty far. I always have lemons on hand and I use them a lot in salads, and oranges are great in dressings too.
Seek out interesting vinegars. I’ve started buying vinegars as a travel souvenir and my collection now includes an heirloom apple cider vinegar from Vermont, sherry and cava vinegar from Spain, and a lambic beer vinegar from Brussels. Specialty stores and local markets are good places to start.
Play around with vinegar combos. You don’t have to use only one vinegar, and some of my best dressings have been a combo. Sherry vinegar + apple cider vinegar. Apple-infused balsamic + lemon. The possibilities are endless.
A little bit of mustard acts as an emulsifier to better blend the oil and vinegar.
But also think beyond mustard. Miso and Indian chutneys are emulsifiers too.
Salad needs crunch. It can come in a variety of forms, but crunch adds essential texture. Think bread crumbs, nuts, or crunchy vegetables.
Add a touch of sweetness by using maple syrup or agave nectar.
Change up your lettuce by adding kale, bitter greens, herbs, or micro greens to introduce different flavors and additional textures.
Use your best olive oil. A salad dressing is where you’ll taste the olive oil the most, so use the best you can afford.
Salt, spices, and aromatics are essential. A healthy pinch of salt helps bring all the flavors together, but dried herbs and garlic are also nice additions.
When I was thinking about this issue, I knew I wanted to reach out to Will Cooper, a private chef for an ultra high net worth family living on a sprawling estate in the English countryside. As part of their daily meals, he makes the cheeses, breads, cured meats, and vinegars from ingredients grown and raised on the property. He’s a master of flavor and I needed to know more about his vinegar making process.
For the curious amongst you, using fruit, botanicals, and herbs to flavour vinegar is a technique that many of us use in dish development. Quite simply, you need a good quality vinegar and something with a good flavour profile to enhance it.
Your vinegar should be neutral like apple cider vinegar or white vinegar (a note: balsamic works too). And the trick with flavouring is to find an ingredient or combination that you like and to simply let them sit in a jar in a cool dark place for as long as you can manage to be patient.
Most recently I used the last of the Yellow Pershore plums from one of the trees here to flavour a few litres of apple cider vinegar, and now even after a week, a deep golden colour has developed, rich with the smell of fruit. You can use fruit, seeds, and flowers to flavour vinegars — all very different but they all have their uses in the food that I work with, whether that’s dressing vegetables, deglazing pans of roasted meats, or as an addition to desserts.
Chicory salad with fig-balsamic vinaigrette
The fig-infused balsamic is assertive and flavorful. I use a bit of apple cider vinegar to add a bit of lighter acidity while still maintaining the fig-forward flavor. This salad works great as a side or even better as a big ass salad for dinner.
Serves 4+
For the dressing
4 tablespoons fig-infused balsamic vinegar (recipe below)
3 tablespoons apple cider vinegar
1 cup olive oil
2 cloves garlic, grated (my favorite microplane)
2 teaspoons dijon mustard
Kosher salt (1 teaspoon to start, plus more)
A few cranks freshly cracked black pepper
For the salad
1 small head radicchio, chopped or torn
1 bunch tuscan kale, inner stem removed, chopped or torn
1 small head green lettuce, leaves torn
1-2 scallions, thinly sliced (a finely chopped shallot or red onions work too)
Parmesan, for grating
Crunch salad topper (recipe below)
To make the dressing, combine everything into a jar and vigorously shake for 30 seconds. Taste and add more salt or pepper if desired.
Combine the greens and onions. Starting with a little at first, toss the greens with dressing until coated and add more to your liking. I find that bitter and more robust greens need more dressing. Top with a shower of parm and crunchy salad topper.
Fig-infused balsamic vinegar
An easy infusion that packs a punch.
1 bag dried figs
1 16 oz bottle balsamic vinegar
Note: You don’t need an insanely expensive balsamic here, but I suggest not getting the bottom of the barrel cheap stuff. I like a slightly viscous balsamic and Trader Joe’s Aceto Balsamico Di Modena is a good option.
Slice the dried figs in half. Pour the balsamic in a jar, add figs, cover, and gently shake a few times. Let sit for at least a week, gently shaking the bottle a few times a day. You should go longer, but I found at about 8 days, the fig flavor really started to come through (and I was getting impatient). Taste and decide when the flavor is right to you.
Strain (you can squeeze excess balsamic out of the figs if they look particularly swollen) and store in an airtight container.
Use in dressings, to drizzle on fruit, or to dip with bread.
Crunchy salad topper
This is very much a formula to riff on, so swap in other things depending on what you like.
1 cup panko bread crumbs
1 cup unsalted sunflower seeds
1 cup pistachios, roughly chopped
Olive oil
Kosher salt
Heat a skillet on medium-high heat. Working in 3 batches, add 1 tablespoon olive oil and gently stir the bread crumbs, seeds, or nuts until toasted, about 3-5 minutes. Add a pinch of kosher salt, mix, and let cool. Once cool, mix together, and store in an airtight container in the fridge. The shelf life is quite long — my current jar was made in November and it’s still crunchy.
Looking for more? See all of on hand’s salad recipes here.
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That fig-balsamic infusion technique is genius. The way it transforms standard vinegar into something with real depth reminds me of why chicory works so well with assertive dressings, its biterness needs that kind of complexity to balance out. Tried a simillar approach with dried cherries in red wine vinegar once and the combo with radicchio was unreal. The 8-day patience threshold feels about right too.