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How to Make the Best Tossed Salad

Who said tossed salad was boring? Trust me, try this and you’ll be calling that person a liar. A total liar! It’s the best darned tossed salad ever. Oh yeah. Our Salad Dressing topic is brought to you by Stonyfield Organic.

The word on the street is that a well-emulsified salad dressing has the right balance for every mouthful, sticks to lettuce best and is superior in all ways. I’m not going to debate that point but I will say this, when I serve a big bowl of my directly-dressed tossed salad at a dinner party, it all gets eaten up. Every time. That’s kinda rare for salad.

The only other time that happens is if I serve my homemade Caesar salad. Other than those two, at the end of the night I usually find myself stuffing most of a bowlful of soggy greens down the garbage disposal.

stack of photos showing the process for making a tossed salad; text overlay reads, "How to Make the Best Tossed Salad".

So whether an emulsified dressing is technically better or not, I don’t know. What I do know is that everyone loves this directly dressed tossed salad.

What do I mean by directly dressed? It’s kind of like when in a restaurant you’re given a bottle of oil and one of vinegar and you shake them onto your salad. Except, I promise, this is way way better than that. There is going to be tons of flavor going on here and you’re going to really love it. Let’s do it!

How to Make the Best Tossed Salad, Right in the Bowl

Step #1 Rub Garlic

Cut a clove of garlic in half and then rub the cut side all over the inside of a medium bowl. Don’t skip this step thinking that it doesn’t do anything. You’re going to be seriously amazed by how much garlic flavor ends up in your salad.

Rub garlic all around the bowl

Step #2 Add Greens

Add greens to the bowl. For this, I like a basic spring mix. But any soft mild greens will do. Fill the bowl right up, a good 4 cups of greens.

Adding spring mix greens to salad bowl.

Step #3 Add Herbs

Add some soft herbs to the bowl. I like adding some dill usually. But chives, basil and flat leaf parsley are also great choices. Tear it by hand into small-ish pieces. How much you add is up to you but I usually do about a quarter cup of torn pieces.

Add some soft herbs to the bowl.

Step #4 Add Olive Oil

Add olive oil. You’ll need about 2 tablespoons.

Step #5 Add Lemon Juice

And lemon juice, about 1 tablespoon. You can use wine vinegar (red or white) but I just don’t think it’s as good here.

Step #6 Add Salt

Add salt. Coarse salt. It has to be coarse salt. I use coarse kosher salt but coarse sea salt would be great too. Regular table salt will end up kind of grainy and overly salty on the leaves. You’ll need about 1/2 teaspoon of nice coarse salt.

Add coarse salt to the salad

Step #7 Add Pepper

Add black pepper. Coarse black pepper. Just like with the salt, you don’t want fine grains. You’ll want to add about 1/4 teaspoon of coarse pepper, just a couple of grinds will do it.

Step #8 Toss!

Toss gently. I like to use some basic tongs for this.

Tossing the salad

Step #9 Taste and Adjust

I find that the salad shrinks a bit from the addition of the liquids and tossing. So I add in another handful or two of greens and toss again. Then taste it. Adjust anything you want more of. If there’s too much of something, you can add more greens to counter it.

Step #10 Enjoy!

And there it is. All ready to eat. I mean it. You’re not going to believe how good this is.

Finished salad

Here are the instructions in printable form for you.

Print
Perfect Tossed Salad

How to Dress a Salad

Contributor: Christine Pittman

Who said tossed salad was boring? Trust me, try this best darned tossed salad ever. 

  • Author: Christine Pittman
  • Prep Time: 5 minutes
  • Cook Time: 0 min
  • Total Time: 5 minutes
  • Yield: 4 servings 1x
  • Category: Side Dish
  • Method: No-Cook
  • Cuisine: American

Ingredients

Units Scale
  • 1/2 garlic clove
  • 3 cups spring mix
  • 2 Tbsp olive oil
  • 1 Tbsp lemon juice
  • 1/2 tsp salt
  • 1/4 tsp pepper, ground

Instructions

  1. Rub garlic on salad bowl.
  2. Add in spring mix.
  3. Add olive oil, lemon juice, salt, and pepper. Toss to coat.

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This post originally appeared in March 2016 and was revised and republished in February 2023.