Quick And Easy Chopped Salad – A Use What You Have Recipe

Tired of boring salads? Try this quick and easy chopped salad recipe – no lettuce required! It’s perfect for using up whatever veggies you have in your fridge and is a delicious healthy alternative to your regular salad. Plus it’s a great meal-prep and make-ahead option, lasting up to a week in the fridge.

When you have lots of small amounts of vegetables in the fridge, the garden, or from a CSA box, making a quick and easy chopped salad is a great way to use them up. This type of salad not only highlights all the fresh flavors versus a standard lettuce-based salad, it’s a great way to reduce waste and save money.

Our family eats chopped salads a lot using this basic recipe and then varying the flavors depending on the season, the vegetables on hand, and the dressing.

Some of our favorite seasonal additions include snap peas and green onions in the spring, corn, tomatoes, and peppers in the summer, and cauliflower, carrots, onions, and kale in the winter.

But most of the time, it’s a use-what-you-have version like the basic version here, which is such a great way to take care of those odds-and-ends vegetables from the fridge.

Why a chopped salad – why take the extra time to chop everything up small?

With a chopped salad, all the pieces are cut to about the same size, allowing for most of the ingredients to be picked up with a fork or spoon at once. This results in a balanced combination of sweet, salty, and sour flavors in every bite.

This is why so many people may prefer the flavor of chopped salads over regular lettuce salads where a bite may only have lettuce or one of the other ingredients.

Ingredients

You’ll need the following ingredients to make this versatile chopped salad recipe:

Ingredient Notes

• Vegetables: The carrots, zucchini, Walla Walla onions, and tomatoes came from the garden/fridge and from the freezer I thawed out some frozen corn.
• Beans: Added for protein, fiber, and heft in the salad, any type of bean will work. I often simply defrost beans from the freezer, but a can of beans is perfect too. Of course, you can omit the beans if you’d like.
• Cheese: Feta is my favorite, but grated parmesan is also a good choice as would queso fresco or cotija for a SW flavor, blue cheese or other hard cheese.
• Olives and other optional ingredients: Adding optional ingredients like green or black olives brings a greater depth of flavor- marinated mushrooms or artichoke hearts are other great additions as well.

How to Make A Chopped Salad

Assembling the salad is as simple as chopping all the ingredients to roughly the same size, adding them to a serving bowl as you cut them.

Dressing Options

Most of the time I use a simple homemade vinaigrette like the one shown, or that I’ve customized according to flavor (to the basic recipe, add sesame oil and soy sauce for Asian, cumin and cayenne for Tex-Mex, etc.). It really lets the flavor of the vegetables and other ingredients shine through.

Occasionally I’ll add some homemade mayonnaise to the vinaigrette to make a creamy-Italian type dressing and sometimes I’ll use Honey-Mustard Dressing. Even Ranch Dressing can be used, depending on the salad ingredients.

Chopped Salad Variations

These are some of our favorite variations:

• Asian (spring): Sliced snap peas, carrots, bean sprouts and green onions dressed with a sesame oil vinaigrette.
• Tex-Mex (summer): Corn, black beans, tomatoes, black olives and peppers dressed with a spicy southwest vinaigrette (a variation of this recipe).
• Greek (fall): Tomatoes, cucumbers, onions, feta, kalamata olives and garbanzo beans with a lemon-herb vinaigrette.
• Winter: Blanched cauliflower, carrots, onions, and kale dressed with a honey mustard vinaigrette.
• BLT Ranch: tomatoes, onions, red beans, and crumbled bacon mixed with Homemade Ranch Dressing and served on a bed of lettuce (or chopped small and added in).

Why no lettuce?

Some chopped salad recipes use lettuce, but I’ve found that the lettuce gets soggy and isn’t good the next day or as a make ahead dish. We also just enjoy the change from basic lettuce salads, though it’s great to serve this on a bed of lettuce or spinach, too.

Storage

Store this salad in an airtight container – or multiple containers or mason jars for weekly meal prep – in the fridge for 4-6 days, depending on the ingredients.

For example, recipes like the one pictured with tomatoes will probably be best used within 2-3 days. Other soft vegetables might also be best used within a few days.

When I bring chopped salads to potlucks or family events I’m always surprised at all the compliments I receive – I think people like that it’s different from a typical salad. Try it and see if you don’t agree!

More Easy Salads to Try

• Black Bean Salad with Corn – A 10 Minute Recipe
• Easy Kale Quinoa Salad with Lemon & Parmesan
• 18 Easy Chicken Salad Recipes

I hope you love this chopped salad recipe – if you make it, be sure to leave a recipe rating so I know how you liked it!

This recipe has been updated – it was originally published in 2012.