We eat salads often during the summer, especially during August months when it's reaching into the 100s, but there's no reason to settle for a plain tossed salad. A composed salad, or as the French call it, salade composée, will elevate your greens to a higher plateau of salad magic altogether.
Here are some techniques to take your composed salad making to a new level of mastery.
A composed salad does not have items just tossed together but items are selected and arranged to complement each other with attention to color, texture and flavor. But we've all had composed salads that were hard to eat or felt very flat in flavor or composition which may make you shy away from such a salad as a main course or even a side course at home.
We have a solution for that. We believe there are a few requisites to a truly crowd-pleasing composition and have a few pro tips for you on creating a delicious composed salad.
Start with making everything close to bite-sized pieces, including the lettuce bed. Often in French cooking a composed salad might be served bedded - on a lettuce bed - but as a home cook you don't want to waste any food, so we suggest tearing or cutting the salad greens into large bite-sized chunks.
Pro Tip: Cut your lettuce into pieces prior to washing, which will make it easier to rinse and dry and speeds up the process.
Your composed salad should start with crisp, freshly rinsed lettuce. We learned this tip from the owner of a now famous salad chain – he said his key to a good salad was rinsing the lettuce well, and not just patting it dry with paper towels but using a salad spinner to remove moisture from the leaves and then season with a sprinkle of salt and pepper. And nothing is sadder than wilted greens! Of the kitchen essentials we use, we recommend a good salad spinner, and we love the OXO Good Grips Salad Spinner so much we've included a link here:
At home your dressing will season this so you can cut out the sodium but we do recommend rinsing well, especially lettuce grown in sandy or loamy soil which can taste gritty if not rinsed well.
Next you’ll want to select your elements for the composed salad based on several factors. Combine tart and sweet, crunchy and creamy, earthy and fruity or other opposites to create a composed salad that has balance and flavor. There is a reason that a tossed salad tastes different than a composed salad – it’s the number of contrasting ingredients. So if you’re not getting the taste in your salad that you desire, you may not be adding enough variety of ingredients.
Pro Tip: Add at least four elements to your lettuce bed to make a composed salad.
Here are a few fun combinations but you can try any you like that combine opposing flavors, textures and tastes:
- Dried and fresh…dried cherries and fresh peaches
- Crunchy and creamy…sesame sticks and blue cheese
- Tart and sweet…goat cheese and strawberries
- Earthy and woodsy…green pepper and shitake mushrooms
- Nutty and juicy…pistachios and blueberries
- Fruity and sharp…tomatoes and red onions
Next dice your ingredients into bite-sized pieces. The key is dicing those chunks big enough to be a good mouthful but small enough to fit a few elements of the composed salad onto each forkful. Large, oversized pieces are awkward - too hard to eat with a fork, can’t be combined with other items in the salad and you want to avoid the need for a knife, which can send smaller elements flying across the table.
Pro Tip: When you add the diced vegetables, nuts, seeds or fruit on top, lay them in rows across the top of the lettuce bed for table presentation.
Add a small jug of homemade dressing to the table and you have a beautiful composed salad presentation. The French style is to use a vinaigrette on the salad, and we often agree – although as Americans, we sometimes add a creamy dressing because we like to do things independently. Try our 2 for 1 Incredible Homemade Ranch Dressing on your next composed salad. It’s delicious!
To make this salad a meal, you will want to add protein. For the composed salad we’ve prepared here, we often top it with grilled pork, chicken or steak on top for a filling, easy to prepare meal. We suggest grilling the protein whole, then slicing at an angle into sections and laying those on top of the other elements crossways or just incorporating into the elements laid on top. Our rule of thumb is that one chicken breast or pork loin will feed two people. With all the elements in the composed salad, you don’t need as much protein per person as you might think. This can also be a kitchen life saver if you don't have much protein on hand and want to prepare a filling meal!
Pro Tip: Adding protein quickly moves this composed salad from a side dish to an easy weeknight meal.
When you're a home cook, you really want easy meals that can be prepared quickly, where you have ingredients on hand, and that are satisfying. What's great about this composed salad is that you can add whatever you have at hand available as long as you balance the flavors and colors, tastes and textures. Try it and let us know what flavors work best for your cooking style.
This salad we’ve made features sliced romaine, diced tomato, diced red onion, dried cherries and crumbled goat cheese. We love Montmorency cherries and have a link for you to find your favorites.
We splashed it with a touch of homemade champagne vinaigrette and it's amazing. We sub out lots of fresh vegetables depending on what's in season and what we have on hand.
What's in your salad?