A Simple Raw Kale Salad, All Dressed Up For Fall
While it’s true that in fall, our food thoughts turn towards rib-sticking meals that warm from the inside out, we also still crave (and need) to work in some lighter meals, too! After a night or two of heavy stews or pastas, we’re ready to hit the reset button, and this autumnal kale salad recipe saves the day every time. It keeps beautifully—most raw kale salads do—and so it’s a great recipe to make ahead of time and store in the fridge for last minute, healthy lunches. Add Pear and Burrata Crostini bites alongside for a real feast for the eyes. Brimming with crisp, sweet red apples and crunchy little clusters of pumpkin seeds, it’s an edible, healthful celebration of this harvest season.
How to Prepare Kale for Salad
If you’ve never made a raw kale salad before, and find yourself a little intimidated by the rough and tough leafy green, don’t fret! It’s pretty easy. Kale is indeed a bit tough, but those dense, almost squeaky leaves are loaded with vitamins A, K, B6 and C, calcium, potassium, copper and manganese—in other words, they’re worth a little work!
- To begin with, you should know that even though we call for Italian kale (also called cavolo nero or lacinato kale) you can make this salad with any kind of kale that you have on hand, buy at the store or find at the farmers market (or in your CSA box!)—curly kale, purple kale, whatever! They’ll all work.
- Give your kale a good wash! Those leaves tend to hang on to dirt, so a really good wash is always a good idea.
- Run your knife along the stem to take the leaves off, and discard the stems (or save them to use in homemade veggie stock, if you’re cool like that!).
- Cut the leaves into small, thin pieces.
The Creamiest, Best Creamy Kale Salad Dressing Recipe
We had a lot of fun dreaming up this dressing, if you couldn’t tell. We played around with the idea of two of autumn’s great bounties—apples and pumpkin seeds—to create the salad, and we wanted to dressing to echo that idea of fall flavors. Apple cider AND apple cider vinegar add sweetness and acidity, while honey and cinnamon take things totally over the top. And as for the mayo? Well, a little mayo never hurt anyone—particularly when paired with a super healthy kale salad. Here’s what’s in this delicious kale salad dressing:
- Olive oil
- Apple cider
- Apple cider vinegar
- Mayonnaise
- Honey
- Cinnamon
About Those Pumpkin Seed Clusters
Sure, you could toss some toasted pumpkin seeds right into this salad and call it a day. They’d be toasty and crunchy and lovely. But! If you’ve got an extra few minutes, make these lovely, slightly sweet, crunchy pumpkin seed clusters. They make this raw kale salad absolutely magical, and they’re nice to have around for nibbling, too. Here’s what’s in them:
- Pumpkin seeds
- Cinnamon
- Cayenne pepper
- Vegetable oil
- Sugar
How to Make a Kale Salad
Like all great salads, this one is mostly about assembly. Just gather your ingredients, massage the kale (always a must!) and assemble. Then dig in! Here’s how we do it:
- Make your kale salad dressing—the dressing lasts up to two weeks, so you can do this way ahead of time if you’d like to.
- Make the pumpkin seed clusters.
- Wash and cut the kale.
- Matchstick the apples! We do this at the last minute, because apples tend to brown.
- Dress the kale and massage it—get in there with your hands and work the dressing into the leafy greens. This will take some of the toughness out of the kale, and make it more pleasant to eat raw.
- Toss in the goat apples, pumpkin seed clusters and a little goat cheese, and eat up!
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Happy Fall to You!
Try this yummy kale salad recipe, and let us know how you like it, OK? Share a photo and tag us on Instagram using @themodernproper and #themodernproper so that we can see your stuff! Happy eating!
