A fresh garden salad is always welcome as long as it’s tasty! For those who can attest that eating a salad does not always have to put health first and taste second, know that both go hand-in-hand, if you unlock the secret behind building a delicious salad. One of the foundational components to build a great salad is to choose your leafy greens carefully in a way that the flavours don’t stand out separately or taste too unpleasant or overpowering.
Apart from having some good quality protein, vegetables, seeds and a lip-smacking dressing, it is the salad greens that really bring a good salad to life. Not only do they highlight the other ingredients present in your bowl, they also add volume to what you choose to construct around it as the base layer. Hence, it was only fair that we enlisted a guide to understanding textures and flavour profiles of commonly eaten salad greens that range between a spectrum of mild and strong flavours. Choose from the flavours you like best and toss up a delicious salad like a pro!
Arugula
This peppery tasting green is a member of the mustard family and one of the most commonly used greens in a salad or sandwich. With its nutty spiciness, pairing arugula with a mild cheese, roasted almonds, chicken or tofu, work best to compliment the strong vegetal punch that this green brings to a salad bowl.
Baby Spinach
This tender, prematurely harvested spinach has a mildly sweet flavour that goes with pretty much any kind of protein and veggies in a salad. Add some sundried tomatoes, olive oil-soaked tuna and a sprinkle of feta cheese for the perfect umami-rich, salty summer salad.
Endive
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A crisp, jade-green member of the chicory family, endive belongs to the same category as its other counterparts like radicchio and escarole. It has a pleasant bitterness with a nutty aftertaste which pairs well with contrasting flavours like walnuts, apples and goat’s cheese. Drizzle a healthy amount of olive oil for the perfect last-minute touch.
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Curly Kale
One of the two varieties of kale that are available in grocery stores, curly kale has a meatier texture for a vegetable that classifies as a salad green. Due to its higher levels of roughage, using a technique called ‘massaging’, which essentially means rubbing the leaves with olive oil and lemon juice, allow the greens to tenderise before they can be used in a salad. You could also blanch the leaves for a minute or two before running them under cold water and adding it to your salad bowl.
Radicchio
This salad leaf, although technically not ‘green’ in colour, is a deliciously purple vegetable that is also part of the chicory family. The white-veined leaves have a distinctly bitter flavour, which pairs beautifully with salty and sweet ingredients in a salad. Pairing it with olives, capers and crispy bacon or even flash-grilling it with a drizzle of balsamic vinegar and lemon juice to make a warm salad, is a delicious way to eat it.