Looking for a salad that feels like a meal? These recipes bring together chicken, roasted vegetables, beans, fruit, cheese, and nuts in satisfying combinations for lunch or a lighter dinner.
Who this collection is for
This collection suits anyone who wants a salad substantial enough for lunch or a lighter dinner. Choose chicken salads for a protein-led plate, bean and squash salads for meat-free options, or beet salads for a sweet-savory combination.
Choose a salad for the way you eat
For a chicken-based option, start with the apple and grape chicken salad or the beet and chicken salad. The first brings crisp fruit and celery into a creamy dressing; the second pairs chicken with earthy beets. If you want a meat-free plate, try roasted butternut squash with feta, greens, and cranberries, or beets with feta and pear.
Sweet, savory, and make-ahead choices
The pumpkin and kidney bean salad brings beans into the mix, while beet and prune salad adds walnuts for crunch. Salad Olivieh is the familiar creamy choice when you want a more substantial cold salad. Read the ingredient list and preparation steps on each recipe page before you start: some salads begin with cooked chicken, roasted squash, or prepared beets, while others only need chopping and mixing.
Use this collection to compare flavors and preparation methods, then open the recipe that fits the ingredients you have and the time available.
Recipes in this collection
We hope you will love this easy Apple and Grape Salad with Chicken! If you are looking for an easy lunch recipe that both you and your children will love, Apple and Grape Salad with Chicken is the one! It can also be a perfect picnic meal or a snack for those who can’t keep away from the kitchen for too long but don’t want to deal with extra pounds. Chicken adds the necessary protein to your body, and celery, grapes and apples give it just the right amount of vitamin crunch that even children will love. Make a double portion of this easy Apple and Grape Salad with Chicken to save some time preparing lunch for the next day, as it can be perfectly stored in the fridge up to 3 days.
A salad with beet and chicken is light and healthy but it’s so delicious that even those who hate “healthy” food will be jealous. Everyone knows the benefits of beets, which can be boiled or roasted.
If you try to eat healthily and if you are thinking what else to include into your daily healthy menu, then this recipe is right for you! Roasted butternut squash salad is made with creamy roasted butternut squash, mixed salad greens, sweet dried cranberries, tangy and flavorful dressing and salty feta. It is full of tasty fall and summer flavors, and is very quick to make. Roasted Butternut Squash Salad not only a perfect fit into the festive family gathering, but it can also bring additional color to your monotonous weekdays! Just toss the ingredients together - and here you have a healthy and filling take-along lunch for any family member. It is so easy and so delicious that you will want to make it over and over again.
This healthy and colorful salad can be a perfect addition to meat dishes, and also serve as a nice meal on its own if you prefer to pursue a vegetarian lifestyle. Beet is well-known for its indispensable health benefits. Betacyanin, a colorful pigment in beet, is an antioxidant that can significantly help your liver get rid of toxins, and thus improve its main function to keep your body clean by absorbing all the harmful chemicals from your blood. Beet also contains betaine, a substance can be used to help with some forms of depression due to its ability to relax your mind and improve general sense of well being. For healthy reasons we prefer using homemade sauces and condiments to those bought in a supermarket. There is value in making something from scratch, and you can always control what comes in a recipe and what quality product comes out of it. We used homemade pickled red onions for this beet salad. We recommend marinating some onions at the same time as you start cooking beet, or even some time in advance, it can be perfectly stored in the fridge and used for other dishes. We know that a lot of people out there like beet but don’t like to bother with cooking it because the process seems time and energy consuming. If you are one of those people, we invite you to check out our *How to cook beet* (or Easy ways to cook beet). We hope you like this beet salad as much as we do, and will learn to love beet not only for its health benefits but also for its taste and color!
This pumpkin and kidney bean salad celebrates all four seasons! Summery, flavorful, and at the same time satisfying and filling - this pumpkin and kidney bean salad makes mealtime a little more tasty while being light on the waistline. It is warm enough to still eat salads as a main meal but cool enough to enjoy beans and pumpkin. There are many ways to make pumpkin and kidney bean salad, and this slightly unusual combination of classic winter ingredients and fruity summer vibes is one of the most nontraditional ways to make it. Feel free to use your imagination and make your own combination, using your favorite ingredients. This salad is good as a side dish and as a filling lunch salad for any day of the week.
This beet and prune salad is simple, amazingly tasty and incredibly healthy. It works great as a side dish and as a healthy snack, if you are watching your kilograms and wanting to improve your overall digestion. It is very important to use sweet and rich red color beets for this salad. So when buying beets check carefully that they don’t look pink or white, and that they are fresh and firm. You can use different methods to cook beets - boil, roast or cook in the microwave . If you value your time and don’t want to wait for hours for the beets to cook, check out our suggestions on how to cook beet in the microwave. There are two ways to tell if the beets are ready: they start to smell yummy, or if you poke them with a fork it’ll go in easily. The beets that are well-cooked will have the skin almost slide off when you touch it. Using a paring knife to remove the skin works way better than a vegetable peeler, alternatively you can also use a paper towel to slide off the skins. Prunes are an important ingredient in this salad. Their sweetness, chewy texture and mild taste compliments the flavors of beet. Prunes are full of nutrients and is a great source of fiber, adding prunes to your salads can significantly improve your overall digestion. You can learn more about health benefits of prunes by reading the summary of some studies. Walnuts is another important ingredient in beet and prune salad. They have higher antioxidant activity and more healthy omega-3 fats than any other common nut, they help reduce inflammation and improve heart disease risk factors. It is important to use good quality walnuts - old walnuts can be bitter and will make your beet and prune salad taste bitter as well.
Salad Olivieh is another name of a famous Russian potato salad that is the most traditional dish for the celebration of the New Year for Eastern European people. It can often be served during other family holidays, gatherings and even during normal weekdays. The salad requires a bit of preparation and some good amount of chopping, but it is definitely worth every effort put into it! The beauty of salad Olivieh is that is stores pretty well in the fridge (up to 5 days). The only recommendation regarding storing would be to store mixed dry ingredients, and add mayonnaise right before serving. Different cooks may use slightly different ingredients in this salad, but we recommend you to try this version, and if wanted you can customize it to your taste, adding or substituting the ingredients. Dill can be easily replaced by parsley, bologna by ham or cooked chicken, you can also leave out the mayo, and replace it with sour cream or plain yogurt (the salad will not have the traditional taste, but it will still taste quite yummy!) Try using homemade mayonnaise following our simple recipe, instead of the store-bought one. It is easy to make and much healthier than the ones you will find on the shelves of the supermarket. It will make your salad Olivie taste much much better! Salad Olivieh is very forgiving, and uses the ingredients that are very easy to find in the supermarket, in fact, we are mostly sure that you will be able to find most of them in your kitchen already. Give it a try and let us know if you liked it as much as we do!