10 Vegetable Salad Recipes to Eat (and Love) This Summer

Written by Michael Matthews

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No matter what the season, you can stroll through the produce section or your local farmers’ market and pick up the fresh ingredients to make a veggie salad. Grab anything that looks good, from apples to zucchini, and there’s a way to integrate it into a medley of deliciousness.

Each vegetable salad on this list is packed with both flavor and nutrition. And as long as you don’t go overboard with the dressing or cheese, you’ll keep the calories low too.

Enjoy!

Vegetable Lasagna Salad

This is a fresh take on pasta salad; a deconstructed version of the layered noodle dish. Instead of tomato sauce, the salad has a tomato-caper dressing and fresh tomatoes.

The recipe uses chilled lasagna noodles as well as thinly sliced zucchini, but you can ditch the pasta and add more zucchini for fewer calories.

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Avocado Cucumber Salad

There are many ways to use avocado in salad: as a creamy element that works as a substitute for mayo, diced for a topping that adds Southwestern flair, or even as the main ingredient.

Here it’s the star – well, one of. Avocado shares the spotlight with cucumber for the perfect balance of creamy and crisp.

Ingredients

Roasted Vegetable Salad with Garlic Dressing & Toasted Pepitas

If you love the rich flavor of roasted veggies, this is the salad for you. Not only are the carrots, beets, and greens drizzled with olive oil and warmed in the oven, but the dressing is made from an entire head of roasted garlic. Even the pepitas are toasted to bring out a nutty flavor.

Altogether, this is a delicious salad whether you have a lot of root veggies to use up, or want a winter salad to help you stay warm.

Ingredients

Root Vegetable & Quinoa Salad with Tahini-Maple Vinaigrette

If you think eating vegetarian has to be boring, you haven’t had the right salad yet. This one hits a lot of the right notes because there are mellow radishes, creamy avocados, sweet carrots, and earthy beets.

They all come together with a unique salad dressing that’s surprisingly easy to whisk together. Once you try tahini-maple vinaigrette, you’ll want to taste it on different combos of fresh greens and roasted veggies.

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Healthy Potato Green Bean Salad

One way to make potato salad healthier is to leave out the mayonnaise. But this one takes it a step further by adding green beans to the mix.

They’re lower in calories than potatoes and add vitamins A, C, and K. String beans are linked to health benefits including weight loss and regulating the symptoms of diabetes.

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Broccoli Apple Salad

You don’t need leafy greens to make a salad. Instead, reach for one of the most nutrient-dense foods: broccoli. This green superfood has cancer-fighting antioxidants, immune system-boosting benefits, and lots of fiber to make this a filling lunch.

Broccoli makes a great base for a salad, and for skeptical eaters it’ll go down easier with diced apples, plump raisins, and shredded carrots. The creamy dressing also helps.

Ingredients

Fruit & Vegetable Fiesta Salad with Honey-Pepper Dressing

Not sure what nutrients are deficient in your diet? Of course it helps to take a daily vitamin, but you could also eat this power salad.

It has over 10 different fruits and veggies in it, including raspberry, red bell pepper, green grapes, green peas, and pomegranate.

Ingredients

Fresh Pea Salad with Ginger-Miso Vinaigrette

This light, crisp salad can use either individual peas or the whole pea pods. Either way, it’s bright and fresh with cucumber, radishes, cilantro, lime juice, and arugula.

Toasted sesame seeds add a little depth of flavor, but overall this salad captures the best of spring and early summer.

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Summer Vegetable Chopped Salad with White Beans & Lemon Vinaigrette

This fresh mix, a combination of bean salad and corn salad, is ideal for a barbecue or picnic.

It uses juicy summer veggies like grape tomatoes, green beans, sweet corn, bell peppers, and zucchini – all easy to find in high quality at any farmers’ market. Tangy feta, fresh basil, and a light lemon dressing finish it off.

Ingredients

Spinach & Cajun Shrimp Salad

This salad is a complete, healthy meal that’s easy to assemble, but that’s not even the best part. All of the ingredients can be layered together in a mason jar for optimal portability.

It’s healthy too with protein, fresh spinach, and avocado. Make Cajun shrimp for dinner the night before, and then assemble this jar salad for lunch the following day.

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