Bonus Recipe: Winter Rainbow Salad
Juicy, crunchy, sweet & slightly bitter; a perfect winter salad!
Hello Friends!
This colorful winter salad will brighten up even the coldest, greyest day with its gorgeous jewel tones, bright citrus flavor and array of flavors and crunchy, juicy textures. It’s a gorgeous salad, one that will prompt “oohs” and “ahhs” when you place it on the table at a holiday get-together. It’s also the perfect re-set salad between rich, heavy holiday meals. When your body needs a break from cookies and cheese and brisket, this winter rainbow salad is healthy and light and still really enjoyable to eat.
This is mostly a fruit salad, with strands of kale or chard tossed in for heartiness and balancing bitter flavor. It’s dressed with a generous squeeze of orange juice, which gives the salad bright, sweet flavor and is surprisingly popular with kids. I’d never thought of dressing salad with fresh squeezed juice until Josie came home from school one day and told me about the amazing salad she’d eaten at school that day.
One of the many nice things about the elementary school that Josie attends (and that I now work at) is the school garden. A small group of dedicated parents volunteer their time planting, weeding and nurturing the plot. Kids get to pop in for occasional garden classes to hunt for bugs, snuggle the chickens and sample the wide array of fruits and vegetables the garden produces. This winter, they’ve been making rainbow salad in garden class which is where I got this “recipe”.
I put “recipe” in quotes, because this is more like a list of ingredients that you toss into a bowl than a strict recipe. I provide exact measurements below, but you don’t have to follow them precisely. This salad is really about finding the right balance of ingredients that taste good to you. Keep in mind that this salad is made by little kids at school, and you should make it with the same loose, fun approach that they have.
Also, the kids eat this salad with their fingers, picking out pomegranate seeds and berries and crunchy apples pieces, which I think is one of the reasons they like the salad so much. I’ll let you decide what you’ll allow at your dinner table!
Winter Rainbow Salad Recipe
Keep in mind what I said above - you don’t need to follow precise ingredient amounts for this salad. The recipe below can be used as a guide to get you started on the right path. When I make this rainbow salad, I like to go heavy on the apples and light on the Swiss Chard (or kale). Don’t skip the strawberries - they add juicy sweetness that makes the salad so good!
Servings: 4 to 6
Cooking Method: Toss together
Prep & Cooking Time: About 15 minutes
A printable pdf of the recipe can be found at the bottom of the page.
Questions? If you have any questions about this recipe, just ask in the comments!
Ingredients
1 small bunch Swiss chard or kale (about 6 small stalks or 3 large)
2 apples, chopped
8 ounces strawberries, chopped
1 cup snap peas or snow peas, sliced in half on the diagonal OR 1 cup cucumber, cut into thin slices or chunks
Pomegranate seeds from 1 small pomegranate
Juice from 1 orange, plus more to taste (be generous!)
Edible flowers (optional, buy very pretty!)
Instructions
Tear the chard/kale leaves off the stalks. Stack the leaves and roll them up like a cigar, then slice thinly with a knife (at school the kids just rip the leaves into small pieces, which you could do instead, but if the pieces are too big they’ll be chewy).
Combine the chard in a large bowl with the apples, strawberries, peas or cucumbers and pomegranate seeds. Squeeze the juice from an orange over the salad, tossing well as you squeeze and adding more juice to taste.
Toss well. Top with edible flowers before serving to make it extra pretty.
Recipe Tips
Don’t skip the strawberries - they add juicy sweetness that makes the salad so good! (You could try using blueberries instead)
Add a generous amount of freshly squeezed orange juice over the salad. You can also add a little bit of lime juice too, if you like.
You can add chunks or orange to the salad.
If you’re bringing this salad to a party you can make it ahead of time, but wait to add the strawberries and orange juice until right before serving.
The salad keeps fairly well overnight, but the strawberries will get soft.
At school, some of the kids like to sprinkle Tajín Clásico Seasoning over the salad.
