How can I learn the ways of salad?

[bumgripes]

Salad. What the hell is it? How do I make it?

I know two salad recipes: chop up some veg and leaves and put them in a bowl, MAYBE with some olive oil and balsamic vinegar if I’m feeling fancy. Or, higher level stuff, chop up some tomatoes and make a dressing of oil and vinegar and mustard. This is my Guest salad. I was not brought up with salads.

When I google salad recipes they are all so bloody complicated and seem to involve cooking some of the components (don’t want to do this, that is a meal not a salad), lots of obscure kinds of nuts, too many expensive vegetables (I don’t want to spend £6 on the veg for one salad). Or, alternatively, they are just potatoes and mayo, which is not exactly what I’m looking for either. I want easy flavourful ways to eat a big pile of fresh veg.

Are there easy, delicious salad recipes out there? Do you know them? Or are my criteria too hopelessly narrow? Thanks in advance!

Agree with a PP that the trick is the combination - doesn't really matter what but you need different textures and types of ingredients. Personally, I think a dressing is essential -e even if it's just a squeeze of lemon juice and a drizzle of oil.

Herbs can make it a lot more interesting.

Cutting your ingredients to different sizes and shapes changes things - I will do a big mixed side salad with large leaves, long slices of peppers, chunks of cucumber, feta cheese and avocado slices. Or a similar salad with similar ingredients but all cut uniformly small, more herbs instead of leaves and it taste and feels totally different.

A lot of green vegetables (sorry) will work better if they're quickly blanched or chargrilled and added to a salad. So I will sometimes add blanched sugar snap peas or I'll chargrill slices of courgette or asparagus to go in a green salad.

I should use cabbage more - it's underrated as a salad ingredient.

If using onion, leave them in vinegar or lemon juice for a few minutes before adding to the salad to remove the sharpness.

If you want onions to be less harsh, like red onions in greek salad etc, soaking them in cold water for 10 minutes makes them much more palatable.

www.riverford.co.uk/recipes/beetroot-carrot-lentil-cumin-salad
I love Riverford recipes, great to use seasonal veg.

I think it's all about textures too. I love a good crunch.

Gem lettuce always feels crunchier than iceberg. But a good fresh ice berg can be good too.

For crunch -I use food processor grate function for things like carrot, brussel sprouts etc and then toss in dressing. Or can just airfryer up old stale bread as croutons for crunch. Or mixed seeds!