Truly the best Italian chopped salad recipe, with chopped fresh greens and veggies in a simple Italian vinaigrette. This salad is vegetarian and easily vegan. If you store the salad separately from the vinaigrette, it will keep well for up to 4 days. Don’t tell anyone if you used bagged lettuce and store bought dressing. Make it dairy/vegan free – omit the cheese! It’s still great without it
Ingredients:
Salad
- 10 ounces chopped romaine lettuce* (about 2 medium or 3 small heads, chopped)
- 1/2 medium head of radicchio*, finely chopped (about 2 cups)
- 1 medium red onion, chopped (about 1 cup)
- 2 ribs celery, chopped (maybe more)
- 1 pint cherry tomatoes, thinly sliced (or quartered)
- 1/3 c stemmed and thinly sliced pickled pepperoncini peppers
- 1/3 c oil-packed sun-dried tomatoes, rinsed and roughly chopped
- 1 can (15 ounces) chickpeas, rinsed and drained, or 1 1/2 cups cooked chickpeas
- 1 c (4 ounces) 1/4″ cubes of provolone cheese (optional)
Italian Vinaigrette
- 1/3 c extra-virgin olive oil
- 1/3 c red wine vinegar
- 1 Tab Dijon mustard
- 1 tsp honey
- 2 cloves garlic, pressed or minced
- 2 tsp dried oregano
- 10 twists freshly ground black pepper
- 1/4 tsp salt, more to taste
- Pinch of red pepper flakes, for heat (optional)
Diections
- In a large serving bowl, combine the chopped lettuce, radicchio, onion, celery, cherry tomatoes, peppers, sun-dried tomatoes, chickpeas and cheese (if using).
- Toss the ingredients together and set aside.
- To prepare the dressing, combine all of the ingredients in a liquid measuring cup.
- Whisk until blended.
- Taste, and add more salt if the dressing doesn’t knock your socks off.
- If you’ll be serving all of the salad at once, go ahead and drizzle enough dressing in to lightly coat the salad and toss to combine. You can store the salad and dressing separately so you can enjoy salad for a few days. Just whisk the dressing again before drizzling (if the olive oil solidifies a bit in the refrigerator, don’t worry, that’s normal—just let it warm up for about 5 minutes at room temperature or microwave for 10 to 20 seconds),
Serves: 6-8 as side serving, 4 as main dish
Source: Cookie + Kate: Recipe inspired by the chopped salad at 1889 Pizza and created with reference to Smitten Kitchen and The Kitchn.
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