14 Filling Salads with Meat

Mimi Thorisson tosses her incredible mesclun salad with figs, toasted nuts, bacon and blue cheese.

Because Jean-Georges Vongerichten is constantly opening new restaurants, it's easy to forget his break-out place: Vong, in Manhattan. This smoky lamb salad dates from Vong's 1992 opening. With crunchy carrots, cucumbers and bean sprouts and a spiced vinegar dressing, it is one of the dishes that launched the Asian-fusion trend in America.

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.

Michael Psilakis describes this delicious dish as "like pork souvlaki tossed with a salad."

Pino Maffeo adorns this vibrant grilled beef salad with different types of micro mint. Steal his recipe—but leave out the micro mint.

Thai cooks typically serve meat already sliced so it's easier to eat. Here, Andy Ricker tosses pieces of soy-marinated flank steak with fresh mint, cilantro and roasted rice powder. The powder (a thickener in Thai curries) adds a fun crunch but is optional.

As cooked lamb cools, the flavor mellows, becoming sweeter and less gamey. Tim Love combines chilled slices of lamb with greens, then adds a dressing made with both raspberry vinegar and preserves.

At his new Bar Americain, in New York City, Bobby Flay serves a sampler of country hams from Kentucky, Texas and Virginia. Incredible on their own, country hams are also great in a salad with juicy mangoes.

"I love thinking of alternatives to classic steak and potatoes," says Michael Schwartz. His Mediterranean-inspired skirt-steak salad is a wonderful mix of just-seared slices of beef, cool and crisp fennel, chewy fregola (the Sardinian dot-shaped pasta) and juicy oranges, finished with a drizzle of briny black olive tapenade.

Lachlan Mackinnon-Patterson makes his savory meatballs with a mixture of lamb, veal and bacon and, surprisingly, a little ricotta cheese to keep everything moist. He serves them on an unconventional salad of grilled scallions with shavings of Parmigiano-Reggiano.

This hearty salad from Nancy Silverton combines crisp iceberg lettuce, milky mozzarella, spicy-tangy peperoncini and salty olives and salami.

This summery salad from Food & Wine’s Justin Chapple is quick and easy to pull together, and a total crowd-pleaser.

You’ve probably eaten a sandwich with a salad inside; now try a salad with a sandwich inside.

Store-bought shredded coleslaw mix makes this salad incredibly easy to make.