Make-Ahead Picnic Salads

This supersimple bean-and-tomato salad, tossed with a tarragon-flavored dressing, is perfect for summertime picnics, like the kind Paul Virant’s mother would prepare when he was a child.

Chef Chad Aaland makes quinoa salad with three types of beans and house-pickled onions. This streamlined version with black beans and jarred cocktail onions is tasty, too.

Susan Feniger likes to make this salad early in the day, so the carrots marinate a bit in the dressing. Harissa, the North African chile paste, adds fiery heat.

This vibrant salad showcases a colorful mixture of pickled onions and radishes, roasted root vegetables, leafy greens and black quinoa.

This no-cook salad from Los Angeles chef Nancy Silverton, inspired by the antipasto in Italian-American restaurants, is a delicious toss of iceberg lettuce, mozzarella, salami and olives in an oregano-laced dressing.

Bulgur (a quick-cooking form of whole wheat) is usually boiled before it’s eaten, but for this terrific main-course salad, Melissa Rubel Jacobson simply softens it in warm tap water before tossing it with baby spinach and precooked shrimp.

Taking a cue from French verrines, these portable, layered chicken salads could also be assembled in one big glass bowl.

“Sometimes I make this simple salad with just one color of cabbage; sometimes I arrange it in alternating rows of color,” says Jacques Pépin. The tangy-salty anchovy dressing would also be delicious on other crisp salad greens, such as escarole or chicory.

This Mediterranean-inspired salad can be served warm or slightly chilled. Be sure to check the seasonings, as cold dishes often need more salt and pepper than those served hot.

Feel free to use chopped walnuts instead of pine nuts, or add half a cup of roughly chopped pitted black olives to the salad.

Sicily’s caponata is a tangy eggplant salad served as a side dish or appetizer. This version adds bits of velvety avocado, full of monounsaturated fats that can help lower cholesterol.

Barley is versatile enough to be served warm or at room temperature, as in this terrific salad with walnuts, parsley and salty bits of ricotta salata cheese in a lemon-garlic vinaigrette.

The mayonnaise dressing for this potato salad gets pungency from mustard oil (store-bought spicy mustard works fine, too) and a hit of smoky-sweet flavor from bacon and bottled barbecue sauce.

This boldly flavored dish is enticing, especially to those with a taste for heat. It can be prepared several hours ahead and served at room temperature.

The chorizo in this farro-and-squid salad makes it robust enough to pair with a ripe Australian red.

Leeks turn sweet and luscious simmered in salted water and dressed with a simple red wine vinaigrette. Chef Armand Arnal heightens the flavor with fresh toasted walnuts and shavings of the firm farmstead sheep's-milk cheese Tomme de Brebis.

This salad offers an amazing array of flavors: sweet roasted broccoli, bitter escarole, salty anchovies, sharp cheese.