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This salad was born from a need to completely declutter and clean out my refrigerator. I was craving kale chopped salad (really) and knew, I just KNEW, I had enough in my refrigerator to make some kind of chopped salad.
I keep saying chopped salad because frankly, it is my favorite kind to make. Find a bunch of reasonably matching ingredients, chop it all into bite sized pieces, toss with a dressing of your choice and- BOOM! Dinner.
Plus, my kids are less likely to pick through a chopped salad than a tossed where they add their own dressing and whatnot. At the end of the day the less griping I hear the better. You know what I mean?
So I had kale, I had goat cheese crumbles, I had strawberries that needed to be used, I had POM brand pomegranate juice, I had Best Boy and CO deli-mustard and I had one over ripe avocado.
That’s all you need for a great salad, IMO. Cheese, greens, fruit, a veggie and an emulsifier to hold your vinaigrette together.
I set about to chopping it all and putting in a large serving bowl then made a quick and dirty dressing made with the pom, garlic, lemon zest/juice, olive oil, mustard and salt/pepper. That’s it. It took me maybe 2 minutes to make a dressing that rivaled a premade one and it was healthier.
{I’m not judging here….stating a fact that homemade dressings are usually tastier AND cheaper!}
Toss it all together using your best kitchen tool- your hands, and it’s ready to be eaten alone or topped with cooked salmon, sizzling shrimp, roast chicken or grilled pork.
Best of all this large salad was very economical. The kale was reasonable, I had the olive oil, strawberries were on sale, the POM was on sale and so were the strawberries. Skip the goat cheese if you would prefer and use feta, blue or even flaked Parmesan.
Ingredients
- 4 C of kale, chopped into bite sized pieces (= 4 big handfuls)
- 2 C strawberries, diced
- 1 avocado, removed from peel and flesh diced
- 4 oz crumbled goat cheese
- 1/2 C walnuts, chopped
- 1/2 C POM pomegranate juice
- 1/2 C olive oil
- juice of 1 lemon
- zest of 1 lemon
- 1 TB deli-style grainy mustard
- 2 cloves garlic, minced
- 1/4 tsp fresh black pepper
- 1/2 tsp kosher salt
Instructions
- Layer first 5 ingredients in a bowl.
- Whisk remaining ingredients in a bowl.
- Taste and season if needed.
- Pour dressing over salad.
- Combine with hands or tongs.
- Wait about 10 minutes before serving.
