This simple tomato, cucumber & red onion salad (Broke Bank Vegan) is a step up from the ‘slice of lettuce, cucumber and tomato) for a side salad. Made with Roma, cherry or grape tomatoes, the recipe also uses fresh herbs, garlic, Dijon mustard, seasoning, vinegar/lemon juice for tang and olive oil.
Avoid tomatoes for nightshade allergies (avoid cherry tomatoes for choking hazards). Keep tomato recipes away from pets due to salt, onion, garlic etc (green tomato plants are toxic to pets, horses & donkeys). Read more on food safety for people & pets.
Bin onion (and all allium) and citrus scraps, as acid can harm worms in compost bins.
To skin a tomato, place a small cross in the bottom, cover with boiling water for 30 seconds, drain and pour cold water over. Due to lycopene (a red phytochemical) they are good for prostate issues – if you get up all night to pee, try a tomato soup or salad.
Tomato Artichoke Salad with Chickpeas
This Tomato & Artichoke Salad with Chickpeas (Short Girl, Tall Order) is a nice refreshing recipe for a summer lunch. It makes use of fresh tomatoes but is very quick and convenient to make, due to tinned chickpeas and canned artichoke hearts (plain or marinated, your choice).
If you struggle to get your veggie intake, this has it all in seconds, plus you’ll protein and calcium from the chickpeas.
To skin a tomato, place a small cross in the bottom, cover with boiling water for 30 seconds, drain and pour cold water over. Due to lycopene (a red phytochemical) they are good for prostate issues – if you get up all night to pee, try a tomato soup or salad.
Just mix all the chopped ingredients and marinate for a couple of hours in the fridge, before serving. Capers are popular in Italy, they are kind of pickled flower buds that give a tangy salty flavour to recipes. Also served with pasta, they kind of taste like pickled olives.
This recipe makes a homemade dressing. If you prefer to simplify things with ready-made salad dressing, we like A Little Bit (made in Kent, these dressings are all vegan-friendly and include a fresh parsley dressing with red onion, which would suit this salad perfectly).
A Recipe for Spring Asparagus Salad
This spring pasta salad (Short Girl, Tall Order) is made with canned artichokes and a basil lemon vinaigrette. Use plastic-free pasta and serve with vegan Parmesan (conventional Parmesan is not even vegetarian, as it contains calf rennet).
A Colourful Sweet Potato Salad Recipe
This sweet potato salad (Broke Bank Vegan) is way more substantial than a limp lettuce leaf, and a few slices of cucumber and tomato. Inspired by rich tastes of the USA’s Deep South, this pairs sweet potato with corn, tinned black beans, red onion, peppers, lime and chipotle power. Then sweetened with maple syrup. This is real salad, for men with big appetites!
This salad uses tinned black beans, but you can sub with any kind of beans. All tinned beans are high in protein and calcium, and cheap to buy. Black beans are common in Mexican food, often added to tacos and burritos. If you can’t find them, just sub with tinned kidney beans or any other beans you like (this recipe likely won’t work with baked beans though!)
Hearty Chickpea Salad Recipe
This chickpea salad (Broke Bank Vegan) uses tinned chickpeas, which are cheap and filling, and packed with protein and calcium. The main ingredient in homemade hummus, adding chickpeas to a salad turns a side salad into a healthy meal that ticks all the nutrition boxes.
Simple Vegan Salad Dressing Recipes
This homemade vegan ranch dressing recipe (Ela Vegan) is a plant-based version of an American classic dressing for green salad. It mixes vegan mayo with garlic, apple cider vinegar, plant milk and dried herbs. If you prefer ready-made, look in stores for Newman’s Own Vegan Ranch.
To make a salad dressing, you simply mix an acid (like lemon juice or vinegar) with an emulsifier (say mustard). Then swiftly whisk in your oil, so it breaks into tiny droplets, to mix in with the other ingredients. Creamy dressings are good made with vegan yoghurt or mayo.
Olive oil is better for salad dressings health-wise than for cooking (rapeseed oil is better). Having said that, Italians and Greeks tend to be healthier than us (often simply because they eat more vegetables).
But for a salad, good cold-pressed extra-virgin olive oil can’t be beat. Some people say we should not eat oil at all (and get all fat from real foods – i.e olives over olive oil). There are debates!
Vegan thousand island dressing (Loving It Vegan) is made with vegan mayo, ketchup, garlic and onion powder, paprika and distilled white vinegar (the edible not cleaning kind, sold in most groceries). Also try this recipe for vegan blue cheese dressing made with cheesy-tasting nutritional yeast and white miso (avoid unpasteurised for pregnancy/nursing)
Main Meal Salad Recipes (even men will love!)
This vegan pasta salad (Rainbow Plant Life) is a good way to use up courgettes (conventional pesto is not even vegetarian, it contains calf rennet). This pesto is made by caramelising chunked courgettes with garlic, salt and red pepper flakes. Top with sliced cherry tomatoes and chickpeas.
Avoid courgettes that are wrinkled or have yellow skin or black spots. Store in the fridge. Choose organic to avoid cross-pollinated seed batches that carry a toxin (Tim Dowling writes how he poisoned himself with homegrown courgettes).
This vegan macaroni salad (Broke Bank Vegan) is picnic food at its best. Adding carrots to the recipe gives the nice orange colour, and the recipe is packed with tangy ingredients like dill pickles, yellow mustard and pickle juice. It also contains celery, red onion and vegan mayo and sour cream.
The only ingredient you may struggle to find is vegan sour cream. This recipe is super-simple: just blend soy milk with lemon juice, plant yoghurt and white white vinegar (quantities in the post). Or just add a little lemon juice to plant cream, in a pinch.
You can find vegan mayo everywhere these days. And this is one food where seriously, you would not know the difference in taste at all. So why not switch?
This recipe for pasta primavera (Jessica in the Kitchen) can be made hot or turned into a pasta salad. The veggie-rich salad contains onion, pepper, squash, asparagus, cherry tomatoes, broccoli and carrots, all dressed in a tasty sauce made with vegan butter, cheesy nutritional yeast flakes, frozen peas and red pepper flakes.
This vegan potato salad (Full of Plants) is a bit more upmarket than our version (the old Heinz tins are not sold anymore anyway). Served in a homemade garlic vinaigrette, this is a filling salad for lunch.
Due to them being cheap and easy to grow, potatoes are a real favourite vegetable. They are not as nutritious as say broccoli, but they are still full of nutrients and very affordable and fill you up.
So do try other recipes beyond baked potatoes and chips! This recipe recommends Baby Yukon gold, fingerling or red-skinned spuds.
This mayo-free healthy pasta salad recipe (Ela Vegan) combines cucumber, pepper, onion and tomatoes, with dill pickles, olives and fresh herbs. The dressing is made with canned white beans and plant milk, flavoured with garlic and Dijon mustard, salt and pepper. Or just make the salad, and top with store-bought vegan mayo.