![Chicken Salad With Lemon-Sesame Dressing](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2022/06/01/dining/as-lemon-sesame-chicken-salad/as-lemon-sesame-chicken-salad-mediumThreeByTwo440.jpg?width=1280&quality=75&auto=webp)
Big Salad With Grains
![Big Salad With Grains](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2017/05/09/dining/09SALADGUIDE9/09SALADGUIDE9-articleLarge.jpg?width=1280&quality=75&auto=webp)
- Total Time
- 10 minutes
- Rating
- Notes
- Read community notes
Advertisement
Ingredients
- 2cups sturdy salad greens, such as romaine, iceberg, escarole or kale
- ½cup cooked grains, like quinoa, farro, bulgur wheat or barley
- 1cup roasted vegetables, like potatoes, sweet potatoes or winter squash
- ¼cup thinly sliced raw vegetables, like bell peppers, celery, carrots, fennel, mushrooms, onions, radishes, snap or snow peas, summer squash or tomatoes
- ¼cup salad dressing, like yogurt, tahini or a vinaigrette, plus more to taste
- ½avocado, thinly sliced
- 1hard-boiled egg, peeled and halved
- 2teaspoons snipped chives, plus more to taste
- 2teaspoons sliced or chopped nuts, like almonds, walnuts, pecans or hazelnuts, plus more to taste
- Whole-grain bread, for serving
Preparation
- Step 1
Place greens in bottom of serving bowl. Add grains in an even layer over greens. Repeat with the roasted vegetables, then the raw vegetables.
- Step 2
Top with dressing, and toss gently. Fan out avocado on top on one side of bowl.
- Step 3
Place hard-boiled egg pieces on the side opposite the avocado. Top with chives and nuts. Serve with whole-grain bread.
Private Notes
Cooking Notes
A rather fun thing to do with eggs and salads is to put a hard-boiled egg in a cheese grater and grate it onto the salad after it's been dressed and tossed - lovely to look at and everyone gets a bit of the egg that way.
When I was in Sweden years ago, they served salads similar to this - with roasted potatoes and hard-boiled eggs, chickpeas and olives. They also added lightly steamed green beans, which go with this very well.
Kale. 1c Farro, rinsed and in instant pot with 1c water 1c Apple cider and bay leaf. 10min high pressure, 5min natural release. Roasted cubes of sweet potato. Hard boiled egg in instant pot 5min with 5min release. Cut up carrots. Walnuts. Dates. Dried cranberries. Made a Soy Ginger salad dressing: 2parts olive oil, 1part rice vinegar, A garlic clove, 1” ginger minced, 1T soy sauce, 1T almond butter, 1T honey, 1tsp sesame oil. Blend to make smooth. RIDICULOUSLY good!
Round 1: Farro, Lacinto Kale, Roasted Sweet Potato & Cauliflower, Red Pepper, Goat Cheese, Sunflower Seeds, Red Wine VInaigrette 6/10 Round 2:
Could we please agree not to issue blanket -- and very scary -- advisories about particular foods? Let's leave that to NYT to research, okay? For example, the warning about raw mushrooms is inaccurate as written. It did make me look up what's known, and it seems advisable not to eat (many) raw mushrooms, but to say "most contain carcinogens" is not helpful. If you want to advise us to look up what's known, fine, but please don't be inflammatory.
Very useful recipe since it's so general and can use whatever you have (which is probably what you like..) So I used chickpeas for grain (close enough), roast cauliflower, toasted pecan pieces and a left over asian dressing..
I try to be as vegan as possible so I would make a vegan dressing to go with this, using the aquafaba from a can of chickpeas or beans, then adding a clove of garlic, a dollop of mustard, lemon juice and vegetable oil and whisk with a stick blender. It can be varied with maple syrup, chipotle sauce, soy, sesami, wasabi, whatever flavour you like. I know it sounds weird but it's yummy and creamy without the cholesterol.
I'm not planning to invest in an instant pot (at the age of 79, going on 80).
We loved this flexible salad recipe!
We multiplied x4 to make dinner & have leftovers for lunch, and the portions were really large and filling. Used romaine for the lettuce, bell pepper for raw veg, sweet potato for the roasted veg, and almonds.
Was really good with green goddess dressing!
Mushrooms are, in fact, protective against breast cancer.
This is a really winning formula! I used kale as my sturdy salad green, wild rice as my grain, sweet potatoes as my roasted veg, red cabbage and red onion as my raw veg, cilantro as my herb and pepitas instead of nuts. I massaged olive oil, lemon and lime juice into my kale, then added plain Greek yogurt for additional overall dressing. I also added chickpeas for a little extra protein since I didn't use egg.
So simple, yet absolutely yummy. Prep time was much longer than 10 minutes, more like 50 minutes, especially if you’re roasting the vegetables, cooking the grains, etc. I used romaine, quinoa, roasted red potatoes, roasted cauliflower, raw radishes, raw porcini mushrooms, avocado, egg, chives, walnuts, and dressed it all with Melissa Clark’s anchovy-mustard vinaigrette.
Kale. 1c Farro, rinsed and in instant pot with 1c water 1c Apple cider and bay leaf. 10min high pressure, 5min natural release. Roasted cubes of sweet potato. Hard boiled egg in instant pot 5min with 5min release. Cut up carrots. Walnuts. Dates. Dried cranberries. Made a Soy Ginger salad dressing: 2parts olive oil, 1part rice vinegar, A garlic clove, 1” ginger minced, 1T soy sauce, 1T almond butter, 1T honey, 1tsp sesame oil. Blend to make smooth. RIDICULOUSLY good!
This is a great salad to use up leftover roasted or steamed vegetables and brown rice or a chicken breast. We usually reserve one night for a big salad, and this formula makes it easy to use up the leftovers that before would just accumulate in the refrigerator.
What's an instant pot?
We use this as a recipe template all the time. Found a new favorite combo tonight—romaine lettuce, barley, roasted sweet potatoes, slivered sweet peppers, simple maple syrup vinaigrette, boiled egg, sliced almonds, green onions and avocado. Served with homemade leek and potato focaccia. *chefs kiss*
So good! I used organic Tuscan kale as the base and then quinoa as the grain, skipped the roast vegetable part as I was short on time, did organic cucumbers, organic onions and organic parsley as my added vegetable, made the vinaigrette with red wine vinegar, mixed everything, did several eggs, two avocados and then added a ton of pepitas. Perfection.
Made this with baby kale, roasted sweet potato, red pepper, a hard-boiled egg, chives, and toasted walnuts with a tahini dressing. Delicious!
Made this tonight and it was delicious! Followed guidelines and used a ginger dressing. So versatile and flexible, it will become part of my rotation. We used romaine lettuce, quinoa, chickpeas, kalamata olives, red and yellow peppers, shredded carrots, thinly sliced radishes and steamed baby green beans. It was very filling!
Made this with the Tahini Ranch Dressing recipe for the dressing and it ended up being a pretty filling dinner. The quinoa is very satisfying. Because a lot of the prep is quick and easy, this is a new hit for the household we'll be making frequently.
Leftovers in our fridge, on which we built this: roasted beet, quinoa, pomegranate seeds, orange vinaigrette, avocado. Adds: fresh veggies, toasted spicy pepitas, egg, butter lettuce (inner, firmer leaves). It had a sweetness and spiciness to it and it was delicious.
Fantastic versatile recipe. Used Tejal Rao’s tahini ranch dressing on this site. So yummy. Frisée, roast baby potatoes and zucchini and tomatoes and radishes. Good for a steamy night in NYC.
This is my weekly "schnoodles with salad" recipe. It's always a healthy and grounding, back to basics meal. You won't feel bloated or blah after eating it. I often use spaghetti noodles instead of the (also good) cooked grains listed, thus schnoodles! Indispensable is a good quality blue cheese when using vinaigrette.* Kalamata olives and green onions too. No thank you to the bread. *1TLBS balsamic vinegar, 2TLBS olive oil, salt, pepper, garlic powder on the bottom of the bowl, mix, add the rest
I make dinner salads three or four times a week in the summer. This has way too many calories, at least a half-day's worth. To slim it down, use a non-fat Greek yogurt dressing or simply a good vinegar, skip the root vegetables in favor of roasted carrots. Omit the avocado or have a single slice.
So yum!! Made with avocado dressing: 1 avo, 1 lime, 2 cloves of garlic, handful of cilantro, 1/3 cup Greek yogurt, 3 tblsp evoo, small handful of chopped onion, salt, pepper, paprika and ground red pepper all in food processor
You can hardly go wrong with this winning and satisfying combination--I used lacinato kale, farro, roasted chickpeas and sweet potato tossed with smoked paprika, and dressed the whole thing with tonnato.
I'm in the process of making this right now. I've just finished cooking some sweet potatoes to use, and I've come back to the recipe because I'm not sure if the vegetables (and the cooked grains, which I've also just made) should be cold or hot. The recipe doesn't seem to say! Any advice will surely come too late for tonight's dinner, but I'd still like to know.
Excellent!! Def make again. I made with barley, Romain shredded carrots (2), Persian cucumber, snap peas, tossed with dressing then plated with a sliced avocado and hard boiled eggs as directed. The dressing was terrific; I made a lemon anchovies parsley, canola oil recipe from Melissa Clark
A lovely, easy and filling meal.
A good hearty salad to make in advance for workday lunches! It was great with kale, quinoa, roasted sweet potato, red bell pepper, almonds and vinaigrette (https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1018740-basic-vinaigrette?smid=ck-recipe-iOS-share). Raw kale is still a little bitter for me even underneath all these ingredients, so will try romaine next time.
Advertisement