It's easy to embrace your veggies with this colorful chopped kale salad! Loaded with flavor and texture and tossed in the most amazing lemon dressing, it's sure to brighten up your plate and your day!
Course Salad
Cuisine American, Vegetarian
Keyword Chopped Kale Salad
Prep Time 20 minutesminutes
Total Time 20 minutesminutes
Servings 6servings
Calories 139kcal
Author Jenn Laughlin - Peas and Crayons
Ingredients
4cupschopped curly kale
½tspolive oil
⅛tspsalt
1cupchopped fresh baby spinach
1cupchopped red cabbage
½cupshredded carrots
1red bell pepper
¼cuplightly salted pumpkin seeds(pepitas) plus extra to taste
crumbled feta cheese(optional topping) skip for vegan/paleo
1tspsweetener of choice(honey, agave, sugar, etc...) - totally optional!
Instructions
First make the dressing. Combine ingredients above in a lidded mason jar, seal, and shake well. Dip a kale leaf in the dressing and adjust sweetener, salt, and pepper to taste. You can make this dressing as sweet or tart as your heart desires! I like mine a bit tart and even add a little lemon zest to the dressing. To reduce tartness, simply add a little extra sweetness, to taste.
Clean and dry kale leaves and remove from stem. Finely chop. Drizzle with 1/2 tsp olive oil and a pinch of salt. Massage using fingers until leaves begin to darken and tenderize. This makes it taste great and gives the kale a silky texture!
Chop remaining veggies. The finer the veggies are chopped the easier it will be to get a little bit of everyting in each bite. Love it so!
In a large bowl combine massaged kale, spinach, cabbage, carrots, pumpkin seeds, scallions. Feel free to add extras of your favorites.
Shake (sealed/lidded) dressing once more and pour about 1/2 of the dressing over the salad. Toss to coat and add additional dressing, to taste. Top with optional crumbled feta. Enjoy!
Notes
Broccoli makes a delicious addition to this salad if you have some handy!Need less servings? Feel free to halve the recipe to yield 3 side salads.Skipping the optional feta will make this salad both vegan and paleo. Skip or use a compliant sweetener for the dressing and it'll also be low-carb and keto friendly.Do both and you've got yourself some whole 30 approved vegetarian eats. Woot!Nutrition Facts below are an estimate gathered using an online recipe nutrition calculator. Values below calculated for both dressing and salad but do not include optional extras. Add approx. 25 calories per TBSP of feta added. Adjust as needed based on sweetener of choice and extras added and enjoy!