I didn’t think it was possible to like salad without dressing until I tried it
The world tells you to eat salad with dressing. Heck, I’ve told you to put dressing on your salad. But it’s not required. Really: there’s no rule saying you have to put a bunch of oily, sugary, and/or creamy stuff on your vegetables.
It turns out that if you’re over the age of 30, you can appreciate how bitter mixed greens interact with sweet grape tomatoes, acidic red onions, greasy rotisserie chicken, and musty parmesan cheese without overpowering the whole shebang with dressing. If you want, add more fat with chunks of avocado. I didn’t have any available for the salad pictured above, but you’ll be better prepared than I was, won’t you?
I was a skeptic. My preferred salad dressing for lunch at work involves mixing olive oil, vinegar, dijon, black pepper, and some sugar. Sometimes I mixed all that with greek yogurt. It tastes good! It doesn’t require a blender! However, it’s also completely unnecessary, provided you pay attention to the core ingredients you put in your salad.
Check out Albert Burneko’s salad prescription for Deadspin from a few years back.
It’s the best advice you’re going to find for putting together a salad that doesn’t suck, and its principles hold up whether you’re adding dressing or not. Here. Let Burneko tell you himself:
Think in terms of roles. You’re casting a reality show, only instead of looking for a dozen superficially diverse variations of the hysterical, egomaniacal, oversexed twentysomething template to cram into a gaudy show-house so they can exchange polluted bodily fluids for six weeks, you’re looking for at least four of the following: leafy, crunchy, tart, sweet, bitter, creamy, salty, nutty, spicy, and fatty. The more colorfully you can fill those roles, the better.
That’s great advice! And guess what? Dressing doesn’t have to enter into this. You can hit all those notes without dressing. Want something sweet? Add fruit. Want something creamy? Add avocado or a creamy cheese. Want something fatty? Choose a meat. Want something spicy? Break out your pepper mill.
It’s not hard. It’s salad. You don’t need dressing.
