Start & End Your Meal Right
Eating your greens shouldn't feel like a chore. In fact, there are a ton of delicious salads that make healthy eating a blast. On the other side of the spectrum, there are also plenty of dessert salads to end your meal on a high note.
1. Beet Salad
We've seen beets pop up a lot in salads recently. Typically, they're just one of many ingredients alongside walnuts and/or feta, but they can also be the star of the show. Variations of the salad are popular throughout Canada.
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2. Caesar Salad
Caesar salad is a classic people pleaser for a reason. The crunch of the lettuce and croutons plus the tang of the dressing is a match made in heaven. Adding chicken would bulk up this salad for a main, but we're focusing on apps.
3. Ceviche
Nothing hits the spot on a hot day like this Peruvian salad. Not only does the citrus juice add a ton of tangy flavor, it also cooks the fish without using heat. Therefore, this fish salad is totally safe to eat raw.
4. Coleslaw
Technically, you could make a slaw out of just about any fruit or veg from apples to carrots to the classic cabbage. However, cabbage is the most popular for a reason. If you like your slaw on the hotter side, take a trip to Tennessee, where hot slaw was named an official state food in 2024.
5. Garden Salad
Garden salad is salad at its most simplest and perhaps its most meaningful. What makes a garden salad shine isn't complicated preparation or expensive ingredients, but rather the thought behind it. A garden salad is all about feeding people a good dish, with ingredients you've nurtured yourself.
6. Greek Salad
While Greek salad seems relatively fancy to Americans as a step up from your regular house salad, it's actually a peasant dish hundreds of years old. This simple dish highlights the best of Mediterranean cooking. Just watch out for olive pits.
7. Macaroni Salad
Probably the most beloved side salad behind coleslaw, no picnic or cookout is complete without a heaping helping of macaroni salad. There are a ton of variations to be found around the world. However, one thing we can agree on is that the shape of the noodle is non-negotionable.
8. Pittsburgh Salad
Why choose between fries or a salad? In Pittsburgh, you can have both with this salad that combines vegetables, meat, cheese, and fries for a salty and satisfying dish. Curiously, you'll have to look for it under other names in Pittsburgh, namely "steak salad" or "chicken salad".
9. Potato Salad
The potato salad we know and love today was introduced by German immigrants in the 19th century. French potato salad is typically lighter and more herbaceous. A similar Russian dish, Olivier salad, includes dill pickles and peas.
10. Waldorf Salad
Named after the Waldorf-Astoria hotel in Manhattan, this light salad was all the rage in the Roaring Twenties. Curiously for an appetizer, there's no lettuce or spinach as the base. Instead, Waldorf salad uses a mixture of celery, apples, and grapes.
Now that we've covered popular appetizer salads, let's look at a few indulgent choices for dessert!
1. Ambrosia Salad
Named after the legendary food of the Greek gods, ambrosia salad is a popular dish throughout the Southern US. Ambrosia salad combines fresh fruit such as pineapples and mandarin oranges with marshmallows and whipped cream. The earliest recipe dates back to 1867.
2. Cookie Salad
We mean this with love, but cookie salad is a dish that could have only come from Minnesota. With vanilla pudding, buttermilk, and fudge stripe cookies among its ingredients, this salad is a delicious dessert. Who says cookies have no place in a salad?
3. Frogeye Salad
We promise this salad is more appetizing than it sounds. Frogeye salad is a rare sweet pasta salad, combining acini di pepe with whipped cream and egg yolks. This salad is frequently served at potlucks throughout the Mormon Corridor.
4. Fruit Salad
Any number of fruits can be made into a fruit salad, with some of the most popular being strawberries, kiwi, and pineapple. Technically, ambrosia and Waldorf salad are both fruit salads. A Malaysian dish, rojak, uses spicy peanut sauce.
5. Glorified Rice
Another Midwest dish, glorified rice is halfway between fruit salad and rice pudding. Glorified rice is popular throughout the Upper Midwest and other parts of the country with Lutheran populations of Norwegian background. This recipe was most popular between the 1930s and 1970s.
6. Jello Salad
Jello salad is one of the most controversial yet iconic dishes of 20th-century America. The convenience of jello and ring molds made these salads easy as well as enormously versatile. Jello salad went out of style when Julia Child popularized French cooking.
7. Seafoam Salad
Technically, seafood salad is just another jello salad, but it's distinct enough that it warrants its own point. Seafoam salad gets its distinctive pale green color from lime-flavored jello. This dish was popularized by the lunch counters at Woolworth's.
8. Snickers Salad
If you thought cookie salad was decadent, you haven't seen nothing yet. One of the most unique salads to come out of the Midwest, Snickers salad mixes the eponymous chocolate bars with cool whip and Granny Smith for a sticky and divisive texture. Whether Snickers salad is a salad or dessert depends entirely on which end of the table it's placed at.
9. Strawberry Delight
Strawberry delight is set apart from other dessert salads by its graham cracker crust. Between the pretty pink color and the delicious strawberries, this salad truly lives up to its name. Strawberry delight is not to be confused with the Persian dish of the same name.
10. Watergate Salad
Originally known as Pistachio Delight, we still have no idea who gave this salad its famous name. Watergate salad is just one of several dishes named to capitalize on the Watergate Scandal, along with Watergate Cake and Nixon's Perfectly Clear Consommé. An earlier recipe from 1922 was published by none other than Helen Keller.
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