Easy Salad Recipes for Every Season
on Apr 23, 2025
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It is always salad season in my kitchen. Whether it’s hot or cold outside, I still crave the freshness of a bowl with greens, vegetables, and sometimes fruit, tossed with a sharp vinaigrette and finished with extras like cheese, nuts and seeds. Lettuce isn’t required. I also love making grain salads, pasta salads and bean salads. No matter the ingredients, I want to create salads with a mix of flavors and bites that have a lot of personality.
Below you’ll find some of my favorite seasonal salad recipes. From big main dish vegetarian salads to side dishes for holiday dinners and summer barbecues, there is something for every day of the year.
Table of Contents
- Easy Spring Salads with Seasonal Produce
- Fresh Summer Salad Recipes for Picnics & Potlucks
- Hearty Fall Salad Recipes with Roasted Veggies
- Winter Salads with Bright and Roasted Flavors
- Everyday Salad Recipes That Go with Everything
- Pantry Staples for Salad Recipes
- How To Make Salads More Filling
- Meal Prep and Salad Storage Tips
- The Art of The Garbage Salad
- Seasonal Salad FAQs
- Looking for More Salads?
Easy Spring Salads with Seasonal Produce
Coming out of winter, spring salads are all about crisp greens and vegetables and fresh herbs. Feature ingredients include asparagus, snap peas and strawberries. They are just the way to welcome sunshine and warmer temperatures.
Strawberry Goat Cheese Salad
Asparagus Salad with Cannellini Beans
Snap Pea Lentil Salad
Mango Avocado Salad
Roasted Asparagus Salad
Fresh Summer Salad Recipes for Picnics & Potlucks
Summer is the season of peak produce—tomatoes, zucchini, corn, peaches and berries. They’re why fresh and flavorful salads are so easy. These recipes are great for outdoor get-togethers from picnics to potlucks, using ingredients at their best.
Tortellini Pasta Salad
Mediterranean Bean Salad
Chickpea Cucumber Salad
Zucchini Corn Salad
Cucumber Tomato Feta Salad
Roasted Red Potato Salad
Hearty Fall Salad Recipes with Roasted Veggies
With feature ingredients like sweet potatoes, apples, kale and cabbage, these fall salads have a both roasted vegetables and fresh greens. They’re filling and satisfying, so they can be main dish salads for lunch or dinner.
Roasted Sweet Potato Cauliflower Salad
Kale Sweet Potato Salad
Apple Walnut Salad
Shaved Brussels Sprout Salad
Winter Salads with Bright and Roasted Flavors
Even though it might feel like nothing is in season, winter salads have lots to offer. Ingredients such as cabbage, citrus, kale and roasted vegetables bring their flavor and bite. Pair them with olives and sun dried tomatoes.
Roasted Cauliflower Salad
Fennel Orange Salad
Crispy Baked Tofu Salad
Everyday Salad Recipes That Go with Everything
I have these salad recipes on repeat. Simple and reliable, they’re the kind of anytime salads that work as a main dish or a side. They go with just about everything from weeknight pastas and sheet pan dinners to holiday meals.
Arugula Salad with Lemon Vinaigrette
Classic House Salad
Italian Chopped Salad
Pantry Staples for Salad Recipes
Fresh ingredients are probably the first thing you think of for healthy salads ideas, but you still need to have a stocked pantry. Below are the essentials that I keep on my shelves:
- Extra virgin olive oil: The gold standard for flavor, this oil is what you need for all your Mediterranean recipes.
- Vinegar doesn’t go bad, so I keep a range of types:
- Balsamic vinegar/ white balsamic vinegar for lighter summer salads
- Red wine vinegar
- White wine vinegar
- Apple cider vinegar
- Sherry vinegar
- Rice vinegar for Asian recipes
- Grains are for so much more than side dishes and stir-fries. Tossing cooked grains into a salad can make it more filling. Here are some of my go-to grains:
- Brown rice
- Quinoa
- Farro
- Italian barley
- Wild rice
- Beans & chickpeas: These canned ingredients are super convenient. Black beans, white beans, kidney beans and garbanzo beans can be the base of no-lettuce salad. They also make salads more filling with protein and fiber.
- Nuts & seeds: Walnuts, pistachios, almonds, sunflower seeds and pumpkin seeds are the finishing touch that gives salads crunch.
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Pin ItHow To Make Salads More Filling
There are a few ways you can turn a salad into a hearty main dish. Pick one or more to suit your taste and dietary preferences:
- Consider portion size. This might be obvious, but start with how much you serve. Use a dinner plate instead of a salad plate.
- Add protein. For vegetarians, this can be beans or chickpeas. For non-vegetarians, try grilled or rotisserie chicken, salmon or shrimp. If you’re feeling fancy, make a steak salad.
- Add cooked grains. Brown rice, farro, barley and quinoa are all good options. You don’t have to turn it into a full-fledged grain salad. If you have some grains leftover from another recipe, toss them in a salad.
Meal Prep and Salad Storage Tips
Plan ahead: if you know you aren’t going to eat an entire salad in one sitting or are doing meal prep, then don’t toss all of it in the dressing. This is the best way to prevent your salad from getting soggy. Keep the salad in an airtight container in the fridge, and store the dressing in a mason jar.
The oil in vinaigrette tends to harden in the chill of the refrigerator. It is still safe to eat. Just let it sit out at room temperature for 15 minutes and stir it. That will give the oil a chance to turn to liquid again.
Don’t throw away salad leftovers if you have tossed them in dressing. The lettuce and ingredients will soften, but you can add fresh greens to help revive the salad.
The Art of The Garbage Salad
When you cook as much as I do, you end up with a lot of leftovers. Sometimes they aren’t enough to be another full meal, but I don’t want them to go to waste. That’s when I turn them into a garbage salad.
If I have leftovers of my sun dried tomato pasta, I will toss them with arugula, drizzle in some balsamic vinaigrette and make a pasta salad that’s more greens than pasta.
Seasonal Salad FAQs
Even though I like to eat seasonally, I am less of a rule follower when it comes to lettuce. The feature ingredient mattes more to me than the greens. Here is what is in season:
Spring: arugula, butter lettuce, watercress, herbs
Summer: romaine, mixed greens, herbs
Fall/Winter: kale, radicchio, cabbage, endive, brussels sprouts
Yes! It is easy to make vinaigrettes and other dressings. Store-bought versions have unnecessary preservatives and ingredients. Once you get in routine of making salad dressing, you will be able to taste the difference.
You can keep salads in an airtight container in the refrigerator up to 3-4 days. The longer you store them, the more they will soften. Lettuce that you have tossed in dressing will get soggy. Grain salads and bean salads will maintain more of their original texture. Store salad dressing separately.
Looking for More Salads?
You can browse all my seasonal salad recipes here.
