6 Simple Ways To Make Winter Salads Awesome

You can eat with the seasons and still enjoy delicious, nutritious green salads during the winter.

The trick is to make simple, nutrient-rich additions to basic winter greens.

Winter Greens

Add arugula, spinach, radicchio, chopped kale, and hearty late-season lettuces to basic greens. Also, Italian parsley. This superb herb is always around. Give it a rough chop and use it to supplement your greens.

Pictured: Winter Green Salad

Avocados

A source of good fats (in this case, monounsaturated), avocados also add rich creaminess.

Pictured: Bacon Avocado Salad

Fruit and Toasted Nuts

Fresh seasonal fruit like apples and pears are always a smart choice. And raisins? They're not just for Cream of Wheat anymore. Raisins offer wonderful sweet counterpoints to green salads. Ditto dried cranberries, dried cherries, and other dried fruits.

Toasted nuts add terrific texture to green salads and can be a good source of protein, healthy fats, antioxidants, and vitamins.

Pickled Veggies and Fermented Foods

Let pickles play a primary part. Pickled green beans, asparagus, beets, peppers, carrots, radishes; they provide wonderful crunch and healthy vitamins, any time of year.

And while you're at it, top a simple green salad with a spoonful of fermented cabbage or carrots...and give your microbiota a boost.

Roasted Beets

Make a few extra roasted beets, slice them up, and add them to your salads. Beets are an extra-genius move if you're also dropping a dollop of goat cheese on top.

Pictured:Roasted Beets n Sweets

With or without the beets, the goat cheese adds rich, creamy goodness to a super-simple lemon juice and olive oil dressing. Which brings us to...

A Simple Vinaigrette

Lemon juice, olive oil, a pinch of salt and pepper, and a vigorous shake. That's really all you need to dress up salads. Fresh, clean, healthy, and extremely simple.

From that base, you can always dress 'em up. Chef John shakes a quick Orange Cumin Vinaigrette for his Raw Kale Salad. He combines Dijon mustard, orange zest, cumin, and red pepper flakes with OJ, rice wine vinegar, and oil. Here he is now...

Need more winter salads? We can do that.