Home Skills How to make a great salad: the ultimate easy guide

How to make a great salad: the ultimate easy guide

Ready to learn how to put together a great salad? The delicious. food team shares their best tips and easy tricks for creating filling salads from scratch, including basic steps and ingredient inspiration. Discover what to add to your salad to boost flavour and texture, understand the golden rules and browse different types to expand your salad horizons…

delicious. food team

Skills | August 2025

1. Variety is key

A great salad often contains lots of different ingredients. This makes each mouthful interesting. A forkful of dressed leaves is fine, but it can’t really hold a candle to one that contains something crunchy (toasted seeds), something sweet (roasted peppers), something spicy (pickled jalapeños), something creamy (avocado), something salty (olives) and something sour (citrus juice). You can often cobble together an incredible salad with things in your fridge and cupboards – just keep tasting and balancing the flavour profile by introducing new flavours and textures.

Try it in… Chicken and Grana Padano salad
Chicken salads are always a winner but this number brings together bronzed meat, peppery rocket, creamy avocado, juicy tomatoes, tangy balsamic dressing and savoury matchsticks of cheese for a vibrant, varied mouthful.

2. Make fresh herbs your salad leaves

A tasteless iceberg or limp lettuce leaf can really ruin a salad – why not ditch leaves altogether and use herbs instead? Any soft herbs work well, from parsley and basil to dill, tarragon and chives. Try adding to a mix of fresh veg and seasonal fruit for sensational salads without the leaves.

Try it in… Steamed chicken salad with fennel, orange and olives
Mint, parsley and dill round out this powerfully-flavoured salad, based on wedges on fennel and orange segments.

3. Use your storecupboard

When you think of a salad you probably think of fresh leaves and vegetables, but a well-stocked cupboard (and fridge) of tins and jars means you don’t have to go out and buy extra ingredients when you want to throw together a salad (see above). Olives, capers, jarred roasted peppers, anchovies, pickled onions, kimchi, sun-dried tomatoes, tinned or jarred tuna; all of these will sit happily in your fridge, ready to instantly elevate salads with salty, sweet or zingy flavours and added texture.

Try it in… Crunchy broccoli and herb chopped salad
Jarred capers, sun-dried tomatoes and anchovies add punch to this herb-packed salad.

4. Coleslaw is king for feeding a crowd

A slaw is an excellent filler salad – a single cabbage makes huge bowls of the stuff– and it’s easy to get creative with. First, choose your veggies: anything crunchy works, from traditional cabbages to fennel, carrots, celeriac or kohlrabi. We like to add fruit too, whether it be something bright like lemon or orange zest, or crisp slices of apple or nectarine. And finally the dressing: use vinaigrette, mayonnaise or even a yogurt-based dressing. Simple, quick and feeds many!

Try it in… Swede, apple and tahini slaw
Embrace the peppery flavour of raw swede in this creamy slaw, paired with nutty tahini and sweet slices of apple.

5. Marinate your salad

A freshly-made salad is a glorious thing, however a make-ahead salad has hidden benefits. Letting vegetables marinate overnight improves the flavour and saves on time; just choose robust produce such as broccoli or aubergines that can stand up to being drenched in dressing. Perfect for prep-ahead lunches or getting ahead when entertaining a crowd.

Try it in… Charred aubergines with caponata dressing
Smoky aubergine slices soak in a Sicilian-inspired sweet-and-sour dressing with olives, capers and raisins in this make-ahead dish that gets better as it marinates. Just bring to room temperature before digging in.

6. Don’t forget toppings

Most things are improved by a scattering of toasted breadcrumbs, and salad is no exception. Dressings help bring all the different ingredients together; a crunchy topping will help add textural contrast, seasoning and a visual point of difference. Breadcrumbs, toasted seeds, nuts, raw onion and even crispy chickpeas all work wonders.

Try it in… Melon and feta salad with crispy chickpeas
Roasted until crunchy and dusted in sumac, chickpeas and mixed seeds add flair to the popular pairing of juicy melon and salty cheese.

8 salad recipes for every occasion and craving

The tomato salad

‘Tarka’ tomato salad
The hot dressing of toasted seeds, curry leaves and lime juice works a bit like an Indian tarka (where spices infuse hot oil), instantly elevating this single-ingredient salad with bright, fragrant flavours.

The chicken salad

Chicken and grape salad with chicken-fat croutons
This is a celebration of everything we love about roast chicken. It’s peppered with crisp shards of chicken skin and croutons fried in chicken fat, while the grapes add pops of sweetness alongside the fresh crunch of shallot and romaine. It’s an absolute beauty.

The potato salad

Prawn cocktail potato salad
Combining two salad favourites, this 20-minute dish is filling, crowd-pleasing and absolutely delicious. Crumbling prawn cocktail crisps over the top for crunch makes it double potato AND double prawn cocktail.

The noodle salad

Soba noodle salad with smoked mackerel and miso dressing
Carrot gives this creamy miso, ginger and sesame dressing plenty of body and an appealing orange hue. It’s fantastic with the earthy buckwheat noodles and plenty of crisp fresh vegetables.

The pasta salad

Mexican street corn pasta salad
This crowd-pleasing pasta salad is inspired by the Mexican street food elotes: charred corn slathered with a creamy, tangy dressing of mayonnaise, lime, coriander and crumbled cheese.

The high-protein salad

Mojo steak and black bean salad
Bringing retro bean salads firmly into the modern age, this high-protein bowl tops beans with pan-fried steak and toasted seeds, all dressed with a zesty, fiery and fragrant Cuban mojo-inspired dressing.

The treat salad

Burrata and mortadella salad with charred nectarines and broccoli
This is a treat all right – it requires a mere 15 minutes to make and relies heavily on a delightful assortment of high-quality ingredients to do the heavy lifting.

The overnight salad

Sweet-and-sour marinated aubergine salad
These marinated aubergines are an excellent dish to have in the fridge and use for lunch all week – they just carry on soaking up all that flavour. Inspired by Italian caponata, this Thai-style version uses sweet chilli dressing, lime and dried mango.