Vegetable Salads

Winter vegetables like carrots, beets, parsnips and celery root are still plentiful in March and are terrific when roasted until sweet and blistered. Sophie Dahl loves the vegetables' vibrant colors on dreary days.

Tom Fundaro, the chef at Villa Creek in Paso Robles, California, looks forward to fall just so he can eat Fuyu persimmons as sweet as sugar. Fundaro features them in this satisfying and nicely bitter fall salad.

Charlotte Druckman, author of Stir, Sizzle, Bake: Recipes for Your Cast-Iron Skillet, loves charring a variety of seasonal ingredients in this great autumn salad. The most delicious part is the warm, crispy halloumi cheese, which adds the perfect salty tang to the dish.

This fresh salad is the ideal meal to consume during your summer pool days.

Chef Brian Clevenger of Raccolto in Seattle creates a delicious paean to summer in this crowd-pleasing salad, which combines sweet corn, juicy tomatoes, peppery arugula and fresh herbs with luscious, creamy burrata cheese.

Boiled salad dressings--which aren't actually boiled but heated gently in a double boiler--are butter-based vinaigrettes that became popular in the South, due to the onetime lack of good-quality vegetable oils. In this version for a grilled-vegetable salad, Hugh Acheson gently cooks egg yolks, spices and vinegar until silky and light, then whips in the luxuriously rich combination of butter, cream and creme fraiche.

This elegant, crunchy salad includes vitamin-and-mineral-packed beets, turnips and fennel, plus protein-rich eggs. Barbara Lynch tosses the shaved vegetables with vinegar and olive oil until they're slightly pickled.

This salad is a well-rounded meal in itself, supplying a wealth of nutrients, including vitamins A and C. "I grew up in the French countryside," Laurent Gras says, "so vegetable-heavy dishes make me feel like I'm back home."

Michael Symon begins Thanksgiving with this tangle of multicolored vegetables--radishes, golden beet and carrots--tossed with a lemon-dill dressing. Because they're served raw, the vegetables should be sliced very thin, in a food processor or preferably on a mandoline. Symon recommends using a Greek feta for the salad's cheese garnish, because he likes that Greek feta is saltier than some others.

In this exquisitely simple recipe, Gabriel Rucker brilliantly riffs on the classic combination of radish, butter and salt by tossing wedges of crunchy radish in a warm dressing made with brown butter (instead of oil) and Spanish Moscatel vinegar (which is golden and slightly bittersweet).

Michael White's fennel-and-asparagus salad at Convivio uses a variety of herbs, including chervil and lemon balm, but it's equally delightful here made with just basil and tarragon.

Yves Camdeborde first offered this delicious salad on Le Comptoir's brasserie menu, serving it warm with thin slices of roast veal. When he opened his take-out shop next door, he created a meatless version that's just as popular.

Both residents of barbecue-mad Kansas City, Adler and Fertig are the authors of The BBQ Queens' Big Book of Barbecue. Even when they're grilling vegetables, as for this hearty salad drizzled with lemon vinaigrette, these BBQ Queens prefer using a gas grill with lots of power--at least 40,000 BTUs.

At Tender Greens, this satisfying salad is served completely raw to preserve vitamins that can get lost during blanching. You can prepare the salad this way by not cooking the asparagus, carrots and sugar snap peas in Step 2.

Art Smith uses a mix of roasted root vegetables, such as the beets, turnips, parsnips and celery root here, to make a delicious salad in colder months. His vinaigrette, made with fresh orange juice, shallot and white balsamic vinegar, is equally wintry.

According to Yotam Ottolenghi, everyone in Jerusalem eats chopped-vegetable salads with whatever else they're having. This nontraditional salad is from the mother of his business partner, Sami Tamimi. Called Na'ama's fattoush, it gets tossed with a tangy buttermilk dressing.

The British love a Sunday roast--it's a weekly ritual that many enjoy with friends and family in the pub. Usually there's chicken with gravy, lamb and mint sauce or beef and Yorkshire puddings. Whichever roast you choose, it always comes with roast vegetables as a side. Since there are often leftover vegetables, I've decided to come up with a salad that celebrates this often underrated side. 

This salad from F&W's Grace Parisi brilliantly combines some of the most exciting food trends of 2013 into one amazing recipe--pickled vegetables, uncommon produce, ancient grains and a cross-cultural dressing that includes miso and chipotle chile in adobo. If ingredients like lime radishes and baby orange cauliflower aren't available at your farmers' market, use equal quantities of similar vegetables.