Wake up your taste buds and welcome spring and with fresh, healthy salads full of crunchy greens, radishes, cucumbers, and herbs! The healthful properties of salads are hard to overstate: Leafy greens are rich sources of B vitamins; high-quality dressings slow down digestion, stabilize blood-sugar levels, and keep energy levels high. Zesty spring plants like Bärlauch (ramps) are even considered ‘medicinal’ for their high levels of minerals and essential oils that support blood circulation and digestion. Combining fresh greens and veggies like these with German pantry staples creates salads which are satisfying and nutritious.
Creamy Cucumber and Sweet Onion Salad with Fresh Dill Horseradish Dressing
This refreshing salad combines great flavors and colors. The fresh herbs taste of summer and the horseradish adds a nice spicy note.
Spring Beet Salad
A salad of watercress, beets, soft-ripened German cheese and a light walnut oil vinaigrette. Perfect with a thin sandwich of hearty German bread and Black Forest ham.
Odette’s Potato Salad
Named after a busy working mother from Bavaria, this fresh interpretation of the iconic potato salad surprises with light flavors and bright colors.
Field Greens or Lambs Lettuce with Smoked Eel & Bacon-Mustard Vinaigrette
This delicious salad is a slightly adapted version of a recipe by German Master Chef Marcel Biró. It combines field greens (the original recipe calls for mache) with smoked eel, creme fraiche, cherry tomatoes, and a bacon mustard vinaigrette.
Red Cabbage Salad with Bavarian Smoked Cheese (Rotkohlsalat mit Räucherkäse)
A colorful salad for the buffet table to be served as a side salad for sliced cold meats or as a vegetarian meal.
Spring Salad or Lamb’s Lettuce with Seared Pork Tenderloin in Wild Garlic Pesto Dressing
This sophisticated spring salad features seared pork tenderloins over an unusual mixture of greens, with a wild garlic pesto.
Pepper Brie and Radicchio Salad
Peppery radicchio combines with German peppered brie cheese in this colorful salad dressed with a wine white German mustard honey dressing.
Cool Kraut Salad
Pure purple power, this salad is chock full of flavor and nutrients. Premium preserved and pickled vegetables make this impressive salad a breeze to prepare.
Sesame Spaetzle Salad with Red Cabbage, Snow Peas and Sweet Bell Pepper
A German East-West dish that’s great as a side or salad entree. Tasty as leftovers, too. Recipe courtesy of Jackie Newgent.
German White Bean & Pea Salad with Proscuitto & Smoked Cheese
This salad is nutritious, colorful, chock full of tasty ingredients, and easy to toss together. Serve it with some German wholegrain crispbread or sunflower seed bread.
Warm Heart of Romaine Salad with Roquefort & Prosciutto Vinaigrette
Browned prosciutto and garlic flavor the vinaigrette that warms the greens and Roquefort blue cheese in this salad adapted from a dish served at Szmania’s Restaurant in Seattle.
Warm Asparagus Salad with Wild Garlic Pesto
(Lauwarmer Spargelsalat mit Bärlauchpesto) Warm asparagus are arranged over fresh arrugula leaves and topped with a wild garlic pesto dressing.
Celery Root Salad (Selleriesalat)
Celery root, or celeriac. is a knobby, brown vegetable tastes like a combination of celery and parsley. Choose a small, firm celeriac with few rootlets and knobs.
Little Red Radish Salad (Radieschen Salat)
The combination of little red radishes and apples make this salad a crisp and refreshing delight. The sharp and tart ingredients are balanced out by delicious German Emmental cheese.
German Style Herring Salad
Before the world’s oldest person, Hendrikje van Andel-Schipper, died in 2005 at age 115, she said that daily helpings of herring helped her live a long, full life. This recipe is adapted from Chef Ludger Szmania at SZMANIA’S in Seattle, and uses pickled herring –- look for brands such as Rugenfisch, Appel, Alstertor and Richter. These German brands are all contain omega-3s and are low in cholesterol. They’re also a good source of protein, and a very good source of vitamin D, vitamin B12 and selenium.
