51 Best Salad Recipes

A big, bountiful salad is the best way to celebrate delicious seasonal produce! Here are 51 stunning salad recipes I love to make again and again.

Salad recipes are my favorite way to showcase vibrant, in-season produce—fruits and veggies that taste so good on their own that it doesn’t take much to make them into a delicious meal. On cold winter nights, I like to brighten up our table with a colorful mix of root veggies and hearty greens. On beautiful, warm days when I’d rather be outside than in the kitchen, summer salads are the perfect lunch or dinner: they’re simple to toss together, but they’re super flavorful nonetheless. Whether you want to add more plant-based meals to your diet or are simply looking to…

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Buckwheat Pancakes

These easy buckwheat pancakes have a light and fluffy texture and earthy, nutty flavor. They're a delicious breakfast...that's totally gluten-free!

We’re heading into a long weekend—let’s make buckwheat pancakes! These beauties are light and fluffy, and the buckwheat flour gives them a wonderful nutty flavor. Saturday morning, here we come. 🙂 While many buckwheat pancake recipes call for a mix of buckwheat flour and all-purpose flour or whole wheat flour, I use 100% buckwheat in mine. I love that you can really taste the buckwheat this way. It’s earthy and nutty, and it makes these pancakes a unique treat. They’re also naturally gluten-free, because despite its name, buckwheat isn’t actually related to wheat. You can read more on that below,…

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Strawberry Compote

Make this easy strawberry compote in just 20 minutes! Bursting with fresh strawberry flavor, it's a delicious topping for ice cream, waffles, and more.

If I’m not eating summer strawberries straight out of the carton, I’m using them to make this strawberry compote recipe. It calls for just 4 ingredients, cooks up in 20 minutes, and tastes so good that I could eat half a batch straight off a spoon. This strawberry compote is lightly sweet, bright with lemon, and bursting with fresh strawberry flavor. It’s thick enough to spread on toast like jam, but it also makes a great topping for ice cream, pancakes, waffles, and Greek yogurt…the possibilities here are endless. And good news! Even though this strawberry sauce is AMAZING with…

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How to Make Hibiscus Tea

Learn how to make hibiscus tea with this easy 2-ingredient recipe! This flavorful drink is delicious hot or iced, and it has amazing health benefits.

I make this hibiscus tea recipe at least once a week. In the winter, I enjoy it hot, the ruby red drink reviving me when the weather is cold and gray. In the summer, I crave it iced. On a warm day, its bold, tart flavor is intensely refreshing. I’m sharing my go-to method for how to make hibiscus tea below. If you’ve never tried it, I hope you’ll give it a go! It’s delicious and SO simple to make. This hibiscus tea recipe calls for 2 ingredients and requires under 5 minutes of hands-on prep. Plus, it has some…

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Best Potato Salad

Learn how to make potato salad with this easy recipe! The perfect BBQ side dish, it's creamy and flavorful, made with tangy pickles, celery, and mustard.

This potato salad recipe is hands down the BEST I’ve tried. It’s creamy, it’s tangy, and it’s flecked with savory herbs, crunchy celery, and (optional, but delicious) hard-boiled eggs. I’ll be bringing it to every cookout and BBQ we attend this summer. This potato salad recipe is so tasty that I can’t get enough! It’s essentially the classic potato salad that appeared at every picnic and potluck throughout my childhood, but it has a few key twists. First, I add diced dill pickles for crunch, and I also mix a splash of pickle brine into the creamy mayo and mustard…

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Mango Salad

This mango salad recipe is about to become your favorite summer side dish! It's bright and refreshing, made with fresh herbs and a zesty lime dressing.

This mango salad recipe is everything I want in a summer side dish. It has a short list of fresh ingredients, you can toss it together in 20 minutes, and it’s sooo bright and refreshing. I love the variety of textures and flavors in this dish. The mango is sweet and slippery, and when you bite into it, it’s almost creamy. I accent it with crisp bell peppers and red onion, plus jalapeños for a kick of heat. Peanuts add crunch, and a zesty lime dressing ties the whole thing together. Generous handfuls of fresh herbs (think spicy basil and…

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Chickpea Salad

Fresh veggies, herbs, and a zesty dressing add bold flavor to this chickpea salad recipe. Healthy and satisfying, it's perfect for picnics and lunches!

You can never have enough chickpea salad recipes in your back pocket, right? I definitely feel that way, and I hope you do too, because even though there are already *several* chickpea salads on this blog, this NEW chickpea salad recipe is a total keeper. It’s filled with fresh Mediterranean flavors—crispy cucumbers play off juicy tomatoes, which in turn contrast with the tender chickpeas. Briny olives and pickled onions add a delicious pop, and handfuls of herbs freshen the whole thing up. A zippy lemon dressing ties it all together. This chickpea salad is healthy, satisfying, flavorful, and fresh. It’s…

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Baked Oatmeal

This baked oatmeal recipe is the best way to start the day! It's easy, healthy, and delicious. Serve it for brunch, or make it ahead for breakfast all week.

This baked oatmeal recipe is my favorite breakfast of the moment. I love that it can serve a group for a special breakfast or brunch, but it’s also the kind of thing that you can make on a weekend and reheat on busy mornings throughout the week. This blueberry baked oatmeal is made with healthy ingredients—think fresh fruit, almond butter, and whole rolled oats—but it tastes like a treat. The top is toasty and nutty, featuring a layer of pecans and coconut flakes that crisp up beautifully in the oven. The middle, on the other hand, stays soft and creamy,…

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A Beautiful Spring Appetizer Board

Hosting a spring gathering? This gorgeous board would be the perfect appetizer. It's filled with fresh veggies, hard boiled eggs, and whipped feta.

Jack’s parents are visiting for Mother’s Day this weekend. After the rush of the last few weeks—we launched Simple Feel Good Food! Our son Ollie turned 2!—I’m hoping to keep the cooking simple. A spring appetizer board like this one will definitely make an appearance sometime over the weekend. I love these types of platters because they look gorgeous (check out those pretty spring radishes!), they offer lots of contrasting textures and flavors, and they’re surprisingly easy to put together. Bonus: you can prep all the components in advance! If you need an appetizer idea for a gathering this season, I highly…

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Quick Pickled Carrots

Learn how to make quick pickled carrots! Crunchy, tangy, and refreshing, they're a delicious snack or addition to salads, appetizer boards, and more.

Pickled carrots don’t get as much love as dill pickles or pickled red onions do, and I’m really not sure why. They can add crunch to a salad, acidity to a sandwich, or unexpected depth to a simple crudité platter.  They’re even great straight from the jar. Dripping with fridge-cold brine, pickled carrots are snappy, tangy, earthy, and sweet. You won’t find a more refreshing snack. So, if you’ve never tried pickled carrots before, make this recipe! It’s insanely easy—the prep takes under 15 minutes—and it’s so delicious. These quick pickled carrots keep for up to 2 weeks in the…

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Tomatillo Salsa Verde

Made with roasted tomatillos, this homemade salsa verde is zesty, spicy, and bright. It's SO much better than store-bought. Pass the tortilla chips!

Try this homemade salsa verde recipe once, and you’ll never get the store-bought kind again. It calls for a short list of fresh ingredients: tomatillos, serrano chiles, garlic, onion, cilantro, and lime. They give it an amazing zesty, tangy, bright, and spicy flavor that’ll have you scooping it up with chip after chip (after chip). And speaking of all those chips, another reason I love THIS tomatillo salsa vs. tomatillo salsa from a jar is its amazing texture. It’s thick and silky, which means that it’ll coat a dipped tortilla chip (or even a batch of enchiladas)—no watery salsa verde…

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A food blog with fresh, zesty recipes.
Photograph of Jeanine Donofrio and Jack Mathews in their kitchen

Hello, we're Jeanine and Jack.

We love to eat, travel, cook, and eat some more! We create & photograph vegetarian recipes from our home in Chicago, while our shiba pups eat the kale stems that fall on the kitchen floor.