This is a fantastic salad for summer. It's fresh, fruity, tangy, and ALL the good things. You can use it as a party side OR even eat it as your main meal. You can choose to add chicken if you'd like (which I did) or eat it without- either way it's amazing. That dressing is fantastic, too!
Strawberry Avacado Spinach Salad
(serves 4-6)
1/2 small red onion (thinly sliced)
1lb of strawberries, hulled and sliced
10oz baby spinach (prewashed)
3/4 cup walnuts, roughly chopped
1 avacado, sliced or diced
Poppyseed Dressing:
(serves 6)
1/4 c sugar
1/4 apple cider vinegar
3/4 tsp sea salt
1 tsp onion powder
1 tsp mustard
1/3 cup olive oil
1/2 tbs poppy seeds
Directions:
First, slice the red onion and place the slices in a bowl of cold water to soak while you prepare the rest. This just helps to keep them from being too overpowering and strong.
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. While you wait for it to heat up, prepare your strawberries. Then add spinach and strawberries in your salad serving bowl.
In a shallow baking pan, add the walnuts and spread out on the pan. Toast in the oven for 6 minutes. You don't want to skip this step. Toasted walnuts in this salad make a fantastic flavor combination that raw walnuts will not bring to the dish.
Now, prepare the dressing. Add sugar, vinegar, salt, onion powder & mustard to a blender. Start the blender to mix ingredients.
If you have a blender where you can pour from the top, that's how you'll slowly add your oil. Do not just dump it all in at once. Pour just a little bit at a time. If you don't have this option, you'll simply just have to stop the blender, pour a little, blend, stop, pour a little, blend and so on.
Pour your dressing into a shallow bowl and add your poppyseeds. Stir your poppyseeds until well-combined in the dressing. I prefer serving dressing on the side instead of dumping in the salad. This allows everyone to choose how much they like. If you don't have small dressing dishes, just keep it in the bowl and throw a spoon it for everyone to serve themselves.
Once walnuts are done toasting, carefully remove from the oven and dump into your salad mix along with your slices of red onion that were soaking. I don't dry them off, I just pull them straight out of the water and place in the salad. Toss the salad up so ingredients are well-combined.
Lastly, slice up an avacado. I garnish the avacado on individual salads instead of adding it in the salad mix. Serve immediately! Dressing will last up to 5 days in an air tight container in the refrigerator.
Add-in Recommendations:
shredded rotisserie chicken
vegan parmesan
cracked black pepper
Author: Stephanie Brown, dinnerpartyofthree
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