Green Salads

Chef Marco Canora likes quinoa, a high-protein seed, because it mimics the satisfying texture and starchiness of a grain. He uses it in this crunchy and fresh winter salad.

Stuart Brioza’s colorful salad is a mix of flavors and textures: bitter, sweet, nutty, crispy, creamy. The delicious hot-sauce-spiked dressing pulls all of the ingredients together.

At L'Arcangelo restaurant in Rome, chef Arcangelo Dandini makes this simple salad with whichever wild greens happen to be in season at the moment.

This delicious roasted-tomato vinaigrette is enhanced with blue cheese, which makes the dressing extra-thick and rich. It's a great contrast to the crisp lettuce, salty bacon and spicy pepitas that top the salad.

This classic Caesar salad is loaded with plenty of garlic, anchovies and Parmigiano cheese. It's also fast and easy to make.

For this refreshingly crunchy salad, Mark Peel adds mineral-rich romaine lettuce, frisée and sliced radishes to the classic Waldorf salad mix of apples, celery and walnuts. In place of the traditional mayonnaise-based dressing, he makes a lemon-walnut oil vinaigrette flavored with cumin.

Fried shallots add sweetness and a crouton-like crunch to this simple green salad from chef Chris Ainsworth. Plus, they're delicious with a pungent blue cheese, like the Spanish Valdeon, which Ainsworth says has "a good crumble factor."

Bobby Flay makes this delightful grilled asparagus salad with sweet grape tomatoes, briny kalamata olives and sharp white cheddar. Each bite brings out a different combination of ingredients.

This refreshingly crunchy salad makes for an excellent spring lunch or super quick dinner.

Antipasto ingredients are sliced and diced to make a fun, flexible chopped salad. We've thrown in our favorites, and so should you. Add the dressing ingredients to the bowl, too, and mix them when you toss the salad—it's the Italian way.

Thick slices of bacon are brushed with a honey-soy mix and then baked in the oven until crunchy. Store-bought chile oil makes this salad even easier.

To jazz up arugula salad and give it a slightly Greek twist, Michael Symon tosses it with chopped fresh dill, briny Greek feta cheese and kalamata olives. He finishes the salad with extra-virgin Greek olive oil, which he says has a pure flavor and is generally more affordable than olive oil from Italy.

Chef Jason Travi thinks of this as an everyday salad because it's simple enough to accompany just about any main course. The dressing can be made in large batches and kept in the refrigerator.

This is the perfect salad for people who love blue cheese: Laura Werlin whisks some cheese into the vinaigrette, then sprinkles more on top of the salad before serving.

Wedge salad (iceberg lettuce with blue cheese dressing and bacon) is a classic American dish. Here, chef James Holmes reconfigures it as a playful cocktail snack.

Katya Drozdova serves simple salads like this one at her Moscow restaurants. The combination of cilantro and walnuts is a distinctly Georgian touch.

"Celery is a vegetable people either love or hate, and we try to get people to love all their vegetables," says chef Amanda Cohen. She sets off celery's bitterness and crunch with meaty oyster mushrooms and grapes that have been grilled until almost bursting.

Chef Corey Lee fries almonds and peels grapes for his compelling salad. At home, use roasted marcona almonds and unpeeled green grapes.

The fun idea here is to make vegetables part of the dressing. Scott Conant sautés strips and cubes of parsnip, carrot, squash and celery root with thyme, vinegar and oil, then uses them to dress Bibb lettuce.

Part green salad, part antipasto salad, this recipe combines lettuce, celery, onion, peperoncini, olives and cherry tomatoes—all tossed in a dressing made with olive oil, vinegar and a little mayonnaise. "The salad reminds me of one my mother made," says Fran Parisi. "Her dressing had no mayo, of course—it was strictly oil and vinegar."

This simple salad has a perfect mix of bitter (arugula), sweet (Asian pear), tangy (lemon dressing) and crunchy (pumpkin seeds). Try it with green apples or Bosc pears if Asian pears are hard to find.

Tahini, the creamy Middle Eastern sesame-seed paste, is the ingenious base for the dressing on this bold-flavored salad. The dressing would be terrific with any number of peppery greens, like escarole, watercress or celery leaves.

Chris Kronner created this salad with ingredients from the garden. It offers an amazing array of flavors: sweet roasted broccoli, bitter escarole, salty anchovies, sharp cheese.

This green salad is one of Jordon Carroll's favorites: romaine lettuce with onion and tomato. She adds a pinch of oregano to the dressing, the way her grandmother used to.

A specialty of Luang Prabang, chef Sebastien Rubis's refreshing salad is made with an array of delicious ingredients—greens, shallot, hard-cooked egg, salted peanuts, tomatoes and cucumber.

Chunks of fresh tomato in a vinaigrette add a little heft to a lettuce salad, like this beautifully arranged one from chef Scott Conant.

The herbed vinaigrette here would be lovely on any summer lettuces.

Using whole herb leaves adds bursts of flavor to this salad. If you can find good fresh figs, use them here in place of dried ones.

Nancy Silverton's lovely salad, adapted from her Mozza Cookbook, features Little Gem lettuce, a smaller, sweeter variety of romaine. If you can't find it, use hearts of romaine instead.

This delicious, healthy salad makes use of sweet broccoli stems.

This very easy salad is a staple on Nadine Levy Redzepi’s table because it’s fresh, tasty and completely versatile.

The key to enjoying greens like radicchio and escarole in their raw state is to temper their bracingly bitter edge with the rich, the citrusy, and the sweet. The creamy golden yolks of soft-boiled eggs and a zesty vinaigrette bring everything together here. For crunch, batons of toasted sourdough (think chic croutons) are ideal for dipping in the egg.