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This strawberry summer salad is just right for the season, with a tangy strawberry vinaigrette salad dressing, pecans, and juicy berries!
Got your flip flops and your grill and your frosé? Then you need only one more thing for the season: this strawberry summer salad! It’s got double the strawberries: sliced and in a sweet tart strawberry salad dressing.
Mix those with spinach, red onion, chopped pecans, and a bit of salty feta, and you’ve got one extremely delicious summer salad! Alex and I love serving it with pizza, grilled shrimp, grilled veggie skewers…it really goes with just about everything.
Use only the best strawberries
Quality ripe strawberries are of utmost importance here. Promise us that you’ll only use beautifully ripe, red strawberries? Some grocery berries are artificially ripened and look red, even though their flavor is tart and unripe. Make sure to use the best berries you can find! If you’re looking to mix it up with the type of berry, try our Blueberry Salad or Blackberry Salad.
How to make summer strawberry salad
This summer strawberry salad is very easy to make: each of the components together make for big flavor! It’s a take on our classic strawberry salad. But this new salad takes it up a notch with strawberries and a strawberry salad dressing! Here’s a bit about what makes this the tastiest salad on the block:
The dressing:
This strawberry salad dressing is our new favorite salad dressing (and that’s out of over 20 homemade salad dressing recipes!). It’s tangy, lightly sweetened with maple syrup, and bright pink using juicy ripe strawberries. It only takes 5 minutes to blend up! You can use either an immersion blender or small blender, or a standard sized blender for this one — the smaller blenders just blend it up quicker.
The greens:
Alex and I have found that 100% spinach salads can be super intense on the flavor. What to do? Use a mix of baby spinach and mixed greens! Of course you can use any salad greens you like. See what’s available at your local market or grocery.
The toppings:
- Sliced red onions are key: the savory bite of onion is perfect against the juicy berry. And those thin purple curves look so lovely! To cut them like you see in the photo, go to How to Cut an Onion.
- Chopped nuts add a perfect texture contrast crunch! You could make this a strawberry walnut salad, strawberry pecan salad, strawberry pistachio salad.
- Cheese crumbles are optional. This strawberry summer salad can easily be vegan / plant based without them. But if you’d like a savory note, adding cheese crumbles is a nice touch: consider feta, goat cheese or even Parmesan.
And that’s it: how to make strawberry summer salad! Let us know if you give it a try. It’s hard to find someone who doesn’t like this one!
More salad dressing recipes
And if you’re looking for more salad dressings outside of this strawberry summer salad, here are some favorites in our collection!
Dietary notes
This strawberry summer salad recipe is vegetarian and gluten-free. For dairy-free, plant-based, and vegan, omit the cheese.
Strawberry Summer Salad
This strawberry summer salad is just right for the season, with a tangy strawberry vinaigrette salad dressing, pecans, and juicy berries!
- Prep Time: 15 minutes
- Cook Time: 0 minutes
- Total Time: 15 minutes
- Yield: 4 1x
- Category: Salad
- Method: Raw
- Cuisine: American
Ingredients
For the strawberry salad dressing (makes 1 ¼ cups total)
- 1 ½ cups sliced strawberries
- 2 tablespoons maple syrup
- 2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar
- ¼ cup olive oil
- ¼ teaspoon kosher salt
For the strawberry summer salad
- 1 cup sliced strawberries
- 1 handful thin sliced red onion
- 5 cups baby spinach leaves
- 3 cups mixed greens
- ¼ cup chopped pecans, walnuts, almonds or pistachios
- ¼ cup feta or goat cheese crumbles (optional)
- ½ cup Strawberry Salad Dressing
Instructions
- Make the strawberry salad dressing: In an immersion blender, small blender or standard blender, blend all ingredients until smooth. (An immersion blender and small blender are the quickest, but you can also use a standard blender: just blend for a few minutes until fully combined.)
- Prepare the salad ingredients: Slice off the tops of the strawberries, then slice them long-wise. Thinly slice the red onion (see the video for this method). If necessary, wash the spinach and mixed greens. Chop the pecans.
- To serve, place the greens on plates and top with all ingredients, then drizzle with the strawberry vinaigrette salad dressing (about 2 tablespoons per serving). Refrigerate the remaining dressing for up to 1 week.
