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Two Super Simple Salad Recipes

Today we bring you two super simple salad recipes. The first one, a chef salad, is a common lunch that I throw together whenever we’re looking for a quick cold meal. It pairs well with garlic bread or a baked potato. The second one is new to our menu and modeled after a salad we ate at a local Italian restaurant.

What is your favorite way to top a salad?

Chef Salad

Chef Salad

A common lunch that I throw together whenever we’re looking for a quick cold meal. It pairs well with garlic bread or a baked potato.
4.75 from 8 votes
Prep Time 10 minutes
Total Time 20 minutes
Course Salad
Cuisine American
Servings 4
Calories 348 kcal

Ingredients
  

  • 1 1/2 pounds lettuce romaine, iceberg or mixed
  • 1/4 head red cabbage shredded
  • 4 carrots peeled and diced
  • 4 ounce cheddar cheese shredded
  • 4 ounce ham diced
  • 4 hard boiled eggs peeled and diced
  • 1 cucumber peeled and diced
  • 1 cup croutons
  • salt to taste
  • pepper fresh ground, to taste
  • 1 cup ranch dressing or your favorite dressing

Instructions
 

  • Tear the lettuce into bite sized pieces.
  • Add lettuce, cabbage, and carrots to a bowl. Season with fresh ground pepper.
  • Toss with 1/2 cup of dressing.
  • Divide lettuce mixture between 4 plates.
  • Top with cheese, ham, eggs sprinkled with salt, cucumber, and croutons.
  • Serve with remaining dressing on the side.
Keyword quick bite
Italian Salad

Italian Salad

Don't like the traditional boring salad you find at restaurants? This one has a delightful mix of Italian meats and cheeses.
4.75 from 8 votes
Prep Time 20 minutes
Total Time 20 minutes
Course Side
Cuisine Italian
Servings 4
Calories 570 kcal

Ingredients
  

  • 1/2 head romaine lettuce roughly chopped
  • 1/4 head iceberg lettuce roughly chopped
  • 1.5 ounce Italian salami deli thin sliced
  • 1.5 ounce pepperoni deli thin sliced
  • 3 ounce mozzarella cheese deli thin sliced
  • 2 large tomatoes sliced
  • 4 whole pepperoncini
  • 2 ounce sliced black olives
  • 1/2 small red onion thinly sliced
  • 1/3 cup Parmesan grated
  • 1 cup Italian dressing

Instructions
 

  • Divide the lettuce between four plates.
  • Arrange the salami, pepperoni, mozzarella cheese and tomato slices covering the lettuce.
  • Top with pepperoncini, black olives, and onions.
  • Sprinkle Parmesan over entire salad.
  • Serve with dressing on the side.
Keyword quick bite

By Angelia Embler

Angi grew up in southern Arizona but now lives in central New Mexico with her husband, two sons and four dogs. She creates, answers @Yoast support, and loves to ramble. Find her curled up with a book or watching her favorite TV shows, movies, or American football game. ?

67 replies on “Two Super Simple Salad Recipes”

Both sound yummy! Its funny, I love salad in restaurants but I never like them at home. I usually make one up every night for my husband but not me. When I do, I love crasins, crumbled feta and walnuts.

I love salad! We have just added a chicken salad to our dinner menu that even the kids love (which totally suprises me.) It’s such a refreshing, light, filling, and easy meal most times. Thanks for these new recipes, I’ll have to give them a try. I always need new dinner menus.

Yum! I love salads! I have a big salad for lunch just about every day. I prefer chef salads, but maybe I’ll have to mix it up and try a variation of your Italian salad sometime.

That Italian Salad sounds heavenly! I am a big Caesar salad person and that’s about the extent of it. Oh, antipasta when I’m really in the mood. I will have to try the Italian salad… I’m sure I could get hubby to try it too! 🙂

Both salads sound delicious. I usually have the most boring salads – lettuce, cheese, dressing. I’ve got to start making interesting salads.

Growing up, that’s how I did salad. Iceberg, cheese, imitation bacon bits, and croutons. I smothered it in ranch dressing because I didn’t like the taste of salad. Now that I’ve experimented with other lettuce types and added interesting toppings, I use way less dressing and get more taste out of the salad itself.

Wow! I tried the recipe for the Italian salad, it was so delicious! We’ve been eating way too little salads lately. I’m so boring when it comes to salad but I loved your recipe. Thanks for sharing it 🙂

4 stars
I haven’t made salads in a long time. I cant wait to try these out. Thank you for posting these. It will be fun to change things up a bit.

These look good. I’m always looking for interesting new salad recipes and I will put the Italian Salad on my list of salads to try. Sometimes I add raisins or chopped olives, depending on what’s in the cupboard or fridge.

I love salads and try to eat one most days. They make a simple meal so complete or make a good meal on their own. Thanks for this, I will give them a try.

I’m amazed by the amount of people who eat salad daily. I don’t know if I could do it. I’d worry about getting bored with so much salad. I’d bet changing it up is a necessity to avoid that rut.

5 stars
I’m not creative when it comes to the “topping” part of a salad, we usually have croutons.

But when it’s time to make a salad, I love to add in creative things, like dried cranberries, walnuts, almonds, different greens, cheeses (feta is my current fave). Also meat! We are carnivores and if I serve a salad without meat, my teen asks me what happened to the meat 🙂

Salad and Soup have to rate as my favorite meal but it is easy to get stuck in the rut of creating the same one over and over. For those who don’t LOVE salad as much as I do in my family, it is even harder to enjoy the monotony. 🙂 Thanks for sharing 2 yummy recipes. The Italian Salad looks divine and even the most reluctant herbivore in my home may find this tempting.

When the local restaurant that inspired the Italian salad recipe put the salad in front of me, I wasn’t sure what to think of it. I’ve always gotten such basic salads at restaurants so it was refreshing to see such thought put into a simple salad. That’s why I shared it, to help people get out of their salad rut.

Hi Angi, the salads sound really tasty. Since I’m a vegetarian, I usually top my salads with hard boiled eggs and sunflower seed bac’n bits. I make a homemade salad dressing using plain yogurt, apple cider vinegar, salt and stevia. Sometime I add a little cayenne or some herbs like basil and oregano, or nutritional yeast and Tamari sauce.

I love salads, but my hubby gets tired of them. I love the lettuce &/or spinach with avocado, black beans, black olives, cucumbers, tomatoes, bell peppers, shredded cheese, some grilled chicken, topped w/ chip pieces. So basically just throw it all in a bowl & mix it up!
But I also changed it up. These 2 recipes actually look really good. I am going to pin them
And what an awesome giveaway you have there

We love mixing up the greens for different flavors. I love avocados so much but I’ve never put them on a salad unless you count guacamole on a taco salad. It’s a great idea!

We have a Salad bar night. I offer all kinds of toppings and everyone creates their own. This is one of my kids’ favorites right next to breakfast for dinner night. A great way to get a good heaping of veggies in their bellies. One of my new favorites is adding chopped/sliced apples or avocado.

I really love the Salad Bar Night idea. I am definitely going to give that a try. Breakfast for dinner sounds equally good:)

Both salads sound so yummy. I can not wait to share them with David as he loves Salads in the Summer. Thanks for sharing them with us.

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