Just because it’s cold outside doesn’t mean your winter salad has to be drab or out of season!
Make this winter salad recipe with the best of the season’s produce, all topped with a tangy pomegranate vinaigrette.
Here’s how I eat vegetables when it’s cold outside: they’re either roasted with olive oil and salt, or they’re tossed together with a slightly bitter salad mix and topped with some sort of vinaigrette.
Is it boring to eat vegetables only one of two ways?
Hell no!
Is it creative?
Ok, no. It’s not.
But it means I get to eat in-season produce that tastes good and fresh. And it can happen even when the temp outside is hovering in the negative digits.
I love this easy winter salad recipe in part because pomegranates are just so dang tasty.
They’re like little jewels of tangy sweetness, and winter is their seasonal time to shine.
Never had pomegranate seeds before? I gave them to my ultra-picky daughter and to my surprise, she popped one in her mouth. Her eyes got wide and she quietly took the whole bowl away from me and carried it away to eat on her own. It was a winter fruit miracle!
I’ve even got a quick tutorial on how to best open a pomegranate fruit and get those sweet jewels out.
If you’re not gentle with fresh pomegranates, the juice tends to go EVERYWHERE, making your kitchen look like the final scene from Macbeth.
But those delicious seeds are trapped beneath a honeycomb of bitter white pith. How do you get them out without tweezers?
Here’s how (it’s so easy!)
Related:
Tabbouleh Salad (Easy to Make Side Dish & Meal Prep!)
Cobb Salad with Buttermilk Blue Cheese Dressing
On top of the pomegranates, I’ve also got this delicious salad topped with crisp, fresh fennel, sweet tangerines, and sugared bacon.
Never done the sugared bacon thing before? There’s a reason people call it ‘bacon crack’.
If you layer bacon strips with a little brown sugar and then bake, the sugar melts into the rendering bacon fat. Once cooled, the sugar becomes a thing, sweet, hardened layer on top. It’s essentially bacon candy, and I dare you to eat just one piece!
All in all, this winter salad is layered with more goodness than you could imagine. It’s the best of cold weather produce (uh, plus hothouse lettuce) tossed with tangy vinaigrette. I’m making it for our Valentine’s Day spread- but you could give it to someone you love anytime the wind’s a-blowin’ outside and you feel like tucking into something fresh and delicious.
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Ingredients
for the salad:
- 4 cups your favorite salad mix
- 1/2 fennel bulb (green stalks, and woody end removed)
- 2 tangerines
- 1/2 cup pomegranate seeds (divided)
for the vinaigrette
- 1 lemon or 1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
- 1/2 cup olive oil
- 1/4 cup sherry vinegar
- 1/4 cup pomegranate juice
Instructions
- Add the salad mix to a large bowl.
- Slice the fennel bulb half into strips, then add to the bowl with the salad.
- Using a sharp knife, cut away the rind and pith of the tangerines. Slice each into thin rounds, and add to the salad bowl.
- Add half the pomegranate seeds (1/4 cup) to the salad bowl.
- Pour the other half of the pomegranate seeds into a container with a tight-fitting lid.
- Add the remaining vinaigrette ingredients to the container, then cover and shake until completely combined and emulsified, about 1 minute.
- Serve the vinaigrette with the salad.
- The salad will keep, undressed, for up to two days. The vinaigrette will keep, separate and tightly sealed, for up to 1 week.
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