Spring Salad with Fresh Rhubarb Vinaigrette
This salad contains a lot of fresh Spring produce, making it a very fun salad to shop for at your local Farmer’s Market or your own garden. While the whole salad really works so well together, the best part of this salad by far is the rhubarb dressing!
I love to use Rhubarb each year by making a rhubarb sauce to serve on top of ice cream, but I wanted to think of another good use for it that wasn’t dessert. Recently, I had the brilliant idea to try it in a salad dressing and it is one of the best salads I have ever made! If you are a fan of dressings like strawberry vinaigrette, raspberry vinaigrette, or honey mustard, you will adore this one. The dressing itself uses a rhubarb sauce made from fresh rhubarb; the recipe I used for this is on Taste of Home (minus the lemon peel & nutmeg). Following the recipe for the dressing, I have the recipe for the salad itself - Enjoy!
Rhubarb Vinaigrette
Serves: 2
Time: 5 minutes, 15 minutes if you need to make the rhubarb sauce.
Ingredients:
½ cup Rhubarb sauce
1 tbsp white wine vinegar
1 tsp dijon mustard
½ tsp salt
¼ tsp pepper
¼ cup olive oil
Directions:
In a high-speed blender (Vitamix) or food processor, combine the rhubarb sauce, white wine vinegar, dijon mustard, salt, and pepper. (I think a regular blender would probably work fine here as well).
With the blender running, slowly drizzle in the olive oil until the dressing is emulsified.
Serve with your favorite salad!
Seriously, so simple and it is such a fun and unique salad dressing. And, as promised, here is the salad I made that is featured in the photos, with one small exception: I did not have goat cheese. It wasn’t in my budget this week, so I used shaved parmesan instead. Definitely go for the goat cheese if you can!
Spring Salad
Serves: 2
Time: 15 minutes
Ingredients:
4-5 cups Spring mix lettuce
2 Boneless skinless chicken breasts
1 tbsp. Olive oil
1 tsp. Salt
½ tsp pepper
1 tsp. Chili powder
¼ cup Pecans
4-5 Asparagus stalks, chopped into 1 inch pieces
4-5 Strawberries, sliced
Goat cheese, for topping
Ice cubes, for shocking the asparagus
Directions:
- Start a small pot of water boiling.
- In a skillet over medium-high heat, heat the olive oil.
- While olive oil is heating, pound the chicken breasts out until they are about ½-1 inch thick (I do this simply to make them cook faster on a weeknight). Season the chicken breasts with the salt, chili powder, and black pepper.
- Add the chicken breasts to the skillet and sear on one side for around 7 minutes. Flip and sear for an additional 7 minutes or until the chicken reaches an internal temperature of 165 degrees.
- Once chicken is fully cooked, remove it from the pan and place it to the side to rest.
- When the water has come to a boil, add the asparagus, cover, and cook for 3 minutes. While the asparagus is cooking, prepare a bowl of ice-cold water.
- When the asparagus has boiled for 3 minutes, strain, and quickly put the asparagus pieces into the ice water to shock them.
To serve: top the spring mix lettuce with the sliced chicken breasts, sliced strawberries, blanched asparagus, pecans, and crumbled goat cheese (or in my case, shaved parmesan). Top with the rhubarb vinaigrette and enjoy!
