It’s summer, and it is too hot to cook. So today we're gonna hit the kitchen and make an absolutely beautiful salad, not just with vegetables, which you always think is the perfect combination for a salad, but we're gonna add in a ton of summer fruits as well. I call this one the summer thrive salad.
In this episode, I go over how to make a salad that will leave you torn on whether you want to eat it, or just look at it. Here are some of my favorite food styling tips from this episode:
Texture is Key
Use a lettuce mix instead of just one kind of lettuce. There's such variety and color and texture, and there's also great variety and flavor. When arranging the greens, make sure that the plate isn't overloaded, but that the greens are kind of coming out at these nice organic angles. Start playing with the way that they sit inside so that they're a little bit asymmetrical and that some of the really pretty leaves are kind of flying out.
Add fresh figs to a salad if you can find them. Slice them in half. They always are beautiful because of the little seedling.
To add a really beautiful and interesting texture to the salad, take some sunflower seeds and maple syrup and make a really beautiful sunflower brickle to crumble that over the top.
Add a little bit of fresh cracked pepper corn for texture.
Pops of Color
Use little tiny tomatoes with absolutely gorgeous greens attached. Just tucking one or two in there again just gives us this beautiful fresh farmer's market look.
Offset chicken slices with a splay of medium size and super colorful nectarine slices.
Think About Food Placement
Whenever I am arranging a beautiful collection of colorful food, I always like to use kind of this diagonal principle and a cluster principle. In other words, I'll take all the ingredients and instead of just spreading them around like you normally would when you're just gonna serve something, I'll actually cluster the items in colors and then try to offset those colors. So if there's something a little bit yellow up here I'll make sure that something a little bit yellow is at the diagonal as well.
Avocado Tips
Drizzle avocado with lemon so it doesn’t brown.
For perfect avocado slices, open up an avocado and then actually cut right down the center so that you have these wedges, then you can just really nicely and quickly peel off the back edges and then get perfect slices every time.
- 1/4 cup sunflower seeds
- 4 Tbsp pure maple syrup
- pinch cumin
- pinch chili powder
- pinch garlic powder
- pinch Maldon sea salt
- 4 cups salad greens
- 2 grilled chicken breasts, sliced
- 1 nectarine, pitted and sliced
- 2/3 cups berries and/or pitted cherries
- 4-6 fresh figs, halved
- 1/2 cup halved, cherry tomatoes
- 1 avocado, pitted, peeled and sliced
- 2 Tbsp diced shallot or onion
- 3 Tbsp champagne vinegar
- 4 Tbsp lemon-flavored olive oil
- 1 Tbsp fresh chopped basil
- 1 Tbsp fresh chopped mint
- salt and pepper, to taste