I Just Learned How to Make The World’s Best Salad
For as long as I can remember I have struggled with cooking. While I always wanted to be good at it, I never felt inspired or confident enough. But the last month has given me a shocking wake-up call, realizing that my current budget just couldn’t handle my excessive food orders and Uber Eats orders – not to mention I’ve also been feeling sluggish, bloated and just not that healthy, how i wanted to feel overall. I knew to save some money and feel healthier it was time to make a change and learn how to love cooking at home.
Due to my slight obsession with TikTok, I decided to follow a few cooking reports to get some ideas on where to start. That’s where I came across it @cafehailee. While I was intrigued by all of Hailee’s home cooking ventures, The video that caught my eye the most was their chopped salad.
A salad seemed easy enough for a novice cook like me, and I figured I could use an excuse to get more veggies in my day. A bowl of salad, loads of chopped veggies, and just a tiny knife cut later, I was enjoying my new favorite salad of all time.
The combination of chopped veggies, meat, cheese and even a little pasta gives you a refreshing crunch in every bite. Plus, her dressing of olive oil, vinegar, honey, and a few key spices immediately brought me back to my favorite childhood salad that my mom used to buy for us at the beach every summer.
prepare ingredients
There are loads of veggies in this salad, all of which are listed in the full ingredient list on their website.
To prepare this dish, you should take vegetables such as iceberg lettuce, radicchio or red cabbage, cucumbers, cherry tomatoes and a red onion. (And yes, I included a photo of the chopped red onion below to show off because it took me years to learn how to do this properly myself.)
Next, the recipe called for hard salami, provolone, ditalini pasta, and croutons. While chopping, I began preparing my ditalini pasta.
For the sake of complete transparency, I decided to make some last minute changes at this point in the recipe. In her video, Hailee slices her homemade bread and makes croutons out of it. I was excited to try this with my homemade sourdough – until I reached in and discovered there was mold on it! So I threw the bread away and decided to continue without the croutons.
Sign up for our newsletter!
Make your salad
Once all of your veggies, meat, and cheese are shredded, you can put them in a bowl and place the bowl in the fridge to keep everything chilled.
To make the delicious (and thankfully easy) dressing, you’ll want to combine rice or red wine vinegar, olive oil, honey, salt, oregano, some pepper, and Pecorino Romano.
After I finished the dressing, I drained the ditalini pasta and got the salad out of my fridge. Then it was time to throw!
After everything was mixed together for my salad, I topped the salad with some more grated cheese and chopped pepper.
For reasons I can’t quite explain, I figured a double shot of espresso would complement my chopped salad nicely. After I finished eating my plate, I still had enough to retreat for seconds and share the rest with my roommate — who also shared my enthusiasm for this incredible yet easy salad recipe.
Next time you’re craving a refreshing, filling, flavorful salad, just try it yourself! You will not regret it.