This recipe for Strawberry Fields Salad is one of our favorite Summer salad recipes. Fresh strawberries and hearty spinach just go so well together. Tie it all together with a sweet and tangy balsamic vinaigrette and you have a delicious salad that everyone can enjoy.
Some Strawberry Fields Salad recipes contain crumbled feta cheese. While that is a delicious addition to the salad, this recipe is kosher, pareve, vegan, non-dairy, and gluten-free. Feel free to add it if you like.
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Why This Recipe Works
- Quick prep time. All you have to do to put this salad together is wash and slice the strawberries, slice the onion, prepare the dressing, and dress the salad. Truly a 5 minute recipe.
- Easy to make. This salad looks beautiful and colorful little effort and no cooking. If you have a dressing shaker, it gets even easier. We love this one:
- Super tasty. Spinach is a very flavorful leafy vegetable and is a wonderful base for a salad. Add to that the sweet fresh strawberries, zesty red onion, and snappy balsamic vinaigrette dressing and you have one tasty salad!
- Healthy side dish. There is almost no fat or added sugar in this salad. The balsamic vinegar has a natural sweetness that only needs a small kick of honey to complete it.
- Simple dressing substitution. Try swapping out the dressing in this salad recipe for our Subway Sweet Onion Sauce (Copycat) recipe.
Ingredients needed to make this 5 ingredient salad
- Fresh spinach - This is a salad that gets its flavor from fresh ingredients. No frozen spinach allowed here. Give it a quick wash and it is ready. If you don't like spinach, you can substitute mixed salad greens.
- Sliced red onion - red onion is perfect for this salad since it is sweet and has a little bit of a bite. Get a few thin slices of the red onion and then slice them in half. You can also dice them if you do not like the long slices.
- Strawberries - clean and slice the strawberries. We like to slice them once lengthwise and then about 4-5 time along the width. This will give you about 10 strawberry pieces per strawberry. Just perfect for this salad.
- Chopped pecans - The pecans in the salad give it some crunch and texture. For this salad we used pecans but you can also substitute in almonds or cashews to change it up.
Make the dressing
Such a simple dressing. Mix together ⅓ cup balsamic vinegar, 2 tablespoon olive oil, and 2 tablespoon honey. That's it! We like to use a dedicated dressing shaker for dressings like this. The reason is that oil and water (or vinegar) don't like to mix together...vigorous shaking in a dressing shaker makes them get along!
If you don't have a dressing shaker, you can also use a mason jar. Either way, you will need to shake hard so make sure that the container is tightly sealed before shaking.
Recipe FAQ
You can partially make it in advance, just don't dress the salad until you are ready to eat it. Store the dressing in a separate container from the other ingredients. Salads like our Creamy Coleslaw or Asian Slaw do better when you dress them and leave them for a long time. This is because the cabbage in those salads can stand up to the dressing and stay crunchy over time. This salad is a leafy green salad which will just get mushy and unpleasant if dressed too early.
The nuts are what gives this salad its crunch and some protein. A good substitute for the nuts are some crispy fried onions (I know, 2 kinds of onions in one dish) or even a little bit of diced celery. As far as the protein goes, you can use feta cheese to make the salad dairy; or some diced salami or smoked turkey if you want to make it a meat salad. To keep it vegan, tofu or tempeh are nice protein substitutions for nuts.
If you do not want to use strawberries try using blueberries or blackberries. If you want to venture away from using berries, you can also try peaches, apples, pears, mangoes, or, fresh figs. Homemade balsamic vinaigrette dressing is delicious lots of sweet fruits.
Yes. Fresh strawberries will always be better but in a pinch frozen strawberries are still delicious in this salad.
Recipe Tips and Suggestions
We serve this salad all the time for Shabbat and Yom Tov. Here are some of our favorite dishes to serve it with:
- Whole Roast Chicken
- Marinated Chuck Eye Roast
- Brown Sugar Smoked Salmon
- Chicken Marsala
- Smoked Chicken Quarters
📖 Recipe
Strawberry Fields Salad - 5 ingredients
Equipment
- Large bowl
- dressing shaker
Ingredients
- 8 oz fresh baby spinach
- ¼ cup red onions
- ¾ cup fresh strawberries
- ¼ cup chopped pecans
Balsamic Vinaigrette
- ⅓ cup balsamic vinegar
- 2 tablespoon olive oil
- 2 tablespoon honey
Instructions
- Add the fresh spinach into a large bowl
- Slice the red onion and strawberries and add them to the spinach along with the chopped pecans.
- Make the dressing in a dressing shaker or mason jar. Shake vigorously to properly emulsify.
- Dress salad just before eating.
Eva
Yum!