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These 5 Fresh Salad Recipes Are Perfect for Late Summer

Try Creamy Lemon Miso Chopped Kale Salad or Chicken and Avocado With Hot Honey Sauce Vinaigrette

Jennifer Bradley Franklin,

AARP

Published August 23, 2024

Salad containing lettuce, chicken, avocado and vinaigrette in wooden bowl

This Chicken and Avocado with Hot Honey Sauce Vinaigrette combines rotisserie chicken, a simple dressing and fresh ingredients including avocado, romaine lettuce, kale and dill.

Erin Kunkel

Summer’s heat practically begs for meals in which easy, flavor-filled salads play a starring role. These five creative recipes allow you to switch ingredients according to your tastes and preferences, and with abundant summer produce at stores and farmers markets, there’s no better time to try some new items. Plus, produce-forward dishes are a great way to boost your nutrient density, hit your fiber goals and add some variety to your routine.

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Orange slices with fennel and shallots on plate

Jenny Rosenstrach's Sliced Orange Salad with Fennel and Shallots features a variety of textures and vital nutrients, including vitamin C from the oranges and fiber from the fennel.

Eva Kolenko

Sliced Orange Salad With Fennel and Shallots

Cookbook author Jenny Rosenstrach lives by the motto: “You don’t have to be a vegetarian to eat like one.” She encourages home cooks to eat mostly plant-based foods during the week, and her latest cookbook, The Weekday Vegetarians Get Simple: Strategies and So-Good Recipes to Suit Every Craving and Mood, makes it easy to fall in love with meat-free dishes that are flavorful and exciting. Her version of a Sicilian classic, Sliced Orange Salad With Fennel and Shallots, gives you plenty of textures and key nutrients, with a vitamin C punch from the sliced oranges and tons of fiber, thanks to the fennel.

Get the recipe: Sliced Orange Salad With Fennel and Shallots

Kiki Nelson's French Potato Salad Bowl uses a little maple syrup for a hint of sweetness to round out the bold flavors.

Kiki Nelson

French Potato Salad Bowl

There was a time when Kiki Nelson’s health was in peril: She was prediabetic and had high blood pressure. Motivated to make a change, she lost 70 pounds and has kept it off with a higher-carb, lower-fat plant-based diet. She shares her favorite recipes in her cookbook Plantifully Simple: 100 Plant-Based Recipes and Meal Plans for Health and Weight-Loss. Nelson’s dishes highlight seasonal fruits and vegetables, and she doesn’t shy away from bold or nostalgic flavors. Case in point: Her French Potato Salad Bowl offers the fiber and texture she loved from traditional potato salad, but instead of adding mayonnaise, she amps it up with coarse-ground mustard, maple syrup, garlic and fresh dill.

Get the recipe: French Potato Salad Bowl

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Kale, hemp hearts, white beans, avocado and dressing on dish

Catherine Perez's Creamy Lemon Miso Chopped Kale Salad uses white beans and hemp hearts to add protein. Her umami-rich tahini dressing gives it a tangy flavor boost.

Catherine Perez

Creamy Lemon Miso Chopped Kale Salad

First-time cookbook author and registered dietitian Catherine Perez is on a mission to take the stress out of eating well. In her debut cookbook, Peaceful Kitchen: More Than 100 Cozy Plant-Based Recipes to Comfort the Body and Nourish the Soul, she leans heavily on the Mexican and Dominican dishes that were a key part of her childhood. Her philosophy is all about viewing food as nourishment, rather than a bunch of numbers in a nutrient breakdown. Her recipe for Creamy Lemon Miso Chopped Kale Salad is a perfect example. Combining garlic, lemon juice, tahini, miso paste and maple syrup creates a tangy dressing in minutes, and varied textures from avocado, scallions, hemp hearts and cannellini beans create extra interest. Her tip to massage the kale with salt and lemon zest is a game changer that improves the texture. This is a salad you might just crave.

Get the recipe: Creamy Lemon Miso Chopped Kale Salad

Golden and red beets, greens and dressing on dish

Palak Patel's Roasted Beets and Greens takes the roots and green tops of golden and red beets and uses tumeric, black mustard seeds and lemon juice to elevate the flavors.

Adam Milliron

Roasted Beets and Greens

For Palak Patel, the Atlanta-based chef, restaurateur and two-time winner of the Food Network’s Chopped and Beat Bobby Flay, treasured memories are tied to the food that accompanied them. With that in mind, her new cookbook, Food Is Love: Plant-Based Indian-Inspired Recipes to Feel Joy and Connection, is based on the idea that food is intrinsically linked to emotions. The book is divided into sections that highlight how food can be comforting, joyful, nostalgic, surprising, caring and more, with many of the recipes drawing heavily on her childhood in India. In the “Food is Vibrant” chapter, Patel shares her recipe for Roasted Beets and Greens, in which she calls for using both the root and the green tops of golden and red beets (great sources of folate, manganese and beta carotene) and boosts the flavor with black mustard seeds, lemon juice and anti-inflammatory turmeric. It’s a colorful, delicious dish that comes together quickly.

Get the recipe: Roasted Beets and Greens

Darlene Schrijver's Chicken and Avocado with Hot Honey Sauce Vinaigrette is one of the recipes she has shared on her popular TikTok account @TheSaladLab.

Erin Kunkel

Chicken and Avocado With Hot Honey Sauce Vinaigrette

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Darlene Schrijver started posting her family’s favorite salad recipes on TikTok at the request of her daughter Athena, a Junior Team USA Olympic weightlifter who was training away from home. What started as a family passion project quickly became a popular social media account when Schrijver began recreating celebrities’ favorite salads. Now @TheSaladLab has nearly 3 million TikTok followers, and Schrijver has compiled her recipes and tips to help home cooks build a better salad in The Salad Lab: Whisk, Toss, Enjoy! In her recipe for Chicken and Avocado With Hot Honey Sauce Vinaigrette, she leverages the convenience of protein-packed rotisserie chicken and supplements it with a simple dressing that comes together in about a minute and good-for-you fresh ingredients, including kale, romaine lettuce, avocado and dill. This might become one of your go-to recipes for a weeknight meal.

Get the recipe: Chicken and Avocado With Hot Honey Sauce Vinaigrette

Jennifer Bradley Franklin is an Atlanta-based journalist, editor and author who has contributed to the Wall Street Journal, Travel + Leisure, Conde Nast Traveler, People magazine, USA Today and others. She's an avid traveler, ballroom dancer and is more than a little coffee obsessed. Read more of her work at jenniferbradleyfranklin.com.

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