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Crunch Salad

Six vegetables cut to the same size, feta, toasted seeds and a sharp balsamic vinaigrette. Assembled, not tossed in advance.

Prep
20 min
Makes
Serves 6
Jump to the recipe
A crunchy mixed salad with carrot and cabbage, dressing alongside
Photo: Loren Castillo / Pexels

A salad called crunch has to earn the name, and it does that through knife work rather than ingredients. Cut everything to roughly the same size — about a centimeter — and every forkful gets the same balance. Cut the cucumber into chunks and the peppers into slivers and you get a salad where each bite is a different, worse salad.

The dressing is three parts oil to one part vinegar, which is sharper than the classic four to one. There is a reason: feta is salty and cucumber is watery, and both blunt acidity. A dressing that tastes correct on a spoon will taste flat on this salad.

Alongside it, caprese skewers cover the same no-cook territory with three ingredients instead of eight.

Salt the cucumber for ten minutes and pat it dry before it goes in. Cucumber is 96% water and it will donate all of it to the bottom of your bowl otherwise.

For the version built on pasta rather than leaves, see orzo pasta salad — it uses the same twice-dressed idea for a different reason.

Dress at the table. Not five minutes before, not in the kitchen — the vinaigrette starts pulling water out of everything the moment it lands, and a salad that stood dressed for twenty minutes is limp and sitting in liquid.

Dressing being poured over a salad with feta and olives
Photo: galyafanaseva / Pixabay

Mixed greens salad with feta: the card

Six vegetables cut to the same size, feta, toasted seeds and a sharp balsamic vinaigrette. Assembled, not tossed in advance.

Six vegetables and a balsamic vinaigrette

For the salad

  • 1 cucumber, seeded and cut into 1 cm dice
  • 2 romaine hearts, chopped
  • 1½ cups (250 g) cherry tomatoes, halved
  • 1 red pepper, diced
  • ½ red onion, finely diced
  • 7 oz (200 g) feta, broken into rough pieces
  • ½ cup (60 g) toasted sunflower and pumpkin seeds
  • Handful of dill and flat-leaf parsley

For the vinaigrette

  • 6 tbsp (90 ml) olive oil
  • 2 tbsp (30 ml) balsamic vinegar
  • 1 tsp Dijon mustard
  • 1 tsp honey
  • 1 small garlic clove, crushed
  • Black pepper

Cutting and assembling

  1. 1 Dice the cucumber, toss it with a good pinch of salt and leave it in a sieve for 10 minutes. Pat it dry.
  2. 2 Shake the vinaigrette ingredients together in a jar until thick and emulsified. It should not separate immediately — if it does, add another half teaspoon of mustard and shake again.
  3. 3 Toast the seeds in a dry pan over medium heat for 3 minutes, shaking often, until they smell nutty. Cool them; hot seeds wilt the leaves.
  4. 4 Layer everything in a wide bowl: leaves first, then the cut vegetables, then feta, then seeds and herbs.
  5. 5 Take the jar to the table and dress it there. Toss once, gently, and serve.

On salt and on timing

  • No salt in the vinaigrette — the feta and the salted cucumber carry it.
  • The undressed salad keeps a day covered in the fridge, seeds stored separately.