Here are ten vegan salads, put in order of how long they take to make. The first one is two minutes if you’ve got cooked millet in the fridge, and the last one is thirty because there’s roasting involved. Two of them are ours; the rest come from cooks we read, and the links go straight to them.
Where a recipe uses honey or a lot of oil we’ve said so, along with what we’d do instead.
1. Millet Couscous Salad with Arugula
Two minutes, provided you have cooked millet waiting in the fridge. Arugula, pine nuts, sundried tomato and lemon go on top of it, and that’s the whole thing.
It comes to 738 calories for the bowl, most of that from the pine nuts, so treat it as a full meal rather than a starter. The dressing lists raw honey, but the recipe offers maple or date syrup right underneath it, so use one of those.
Get the recipe from Cook Me Free.
2. Refreshing Zucchini Salad
This one’s ours. Raw zucchini sliced thin is the part people don’t expect to work, and it does. Ten minutes, serves two, and nothing gets cooked at any point.
It’s best in summer, when the zucchini are small and firm.
3. Millet Salad with Peach and Fennel
Peach and fennel together is the reason to make this one. You get sweet against aniseed, with millet underneath and pine nuts and almond butter over the top, and it’s a combination we wouldn’t have thought of on our own.
Ten minutes for two. There’s raw honey in the dressing, so swap in maple syrup.
Get the recipe from Cook Me Free.
4. Thai Mango Salad with Cashews
Ripe mango, red pepper, red onion and a lot of cilantro over leaves, with cashews for crunch and two limes in the dressing. Ten minutes, and it serves four.
The dressing has a quarter cup of olive oil in it. We’d leave it out entirely; the mango and the lime carry it perfectly well on their own.
Get the recipe from The Herbeevore.
5. Edamame Veggie Salad
Edamame, carrot, celery, onion and tomato, all chopped small so you get a bit of everything in one spoonful. Ten minutes for two, at 260 calories a serving.
The edamame is what turns it from a side dish into something you can call lunch.
Get the recipe from Christina’s Cucina.
6. Thai Quinoa Salad with Peanut Sauce
Cooked quinoa with red cabbage, carrot, spring onion, peanuts and a peanut dressing. Fifteen minutes, and it makes ten servings, which is the biggest batch on this list by some distance, so it’s a good one when you’re feeding a crowd or want lunches for the week.
There’s half a cup of olive oil in the dressing. Use water instead and let the peanut butter give it the body.
Get the recipe from The Herbeevore.
7. Easy Summer Quinoa Salad
Our own recipe, and the second of ours on this list. It’s quinoa with summer vegetables, and it takes about as long as the quinoa needs to cook, which is seventeen minutes for two servings.
Cook the quinoa the night before and this becomes a five-minute salad.
8. Spring Roll Salad
Everything that normally goes inside a spring roll, in a bowl, without the wrapper. Vermicelli noodles, edamame, carrot, pepper, cucumber, mint and peanuts. Twenty minutes and it serves four.
Rolling rice paper is the part that puts most people off spring rolls, and this skips it entirely.
Get the recipe from Sunglow Kitchen.
9. Sesame Miso Kale Salad with Tofu
Kale with a sesame and miso dressing, tofu to give it some weight, and basil running through it, which isn’t where you’d expect basil to turn up. The miso is the reason this tastes like more than a bowl of kale.
Massage the leaves before you dress them, or they’ll stay tough.
Get the recipe from Avocado Skillet.
10. Delicata Squash Salad with Tahini
Delicata squash and sweet potato roasted with paprika and cayenne, then piled onto kale with sliced apple and a tahini dressing. Thirty minutes, serves four, 310 calories a serving.
Delicata skin is thin enough to eat, which saves you the peeling, and that’s a good part of why we like it.
Get the recipe from Champagne Tastes.
More salads from our kitchen
The fastest salads are always the ones where something is already cooked and waiting in the fridge. A pot of quinoa or millet made on Sunday turns most of this list into a ten-minute job, and it’s the habit we’d suggest picking up before any particular recipe.
- Fresh Cucumber Carrot Salad
- Alfalfa Sprouts Salad
- Avocado Quinoa Salad with Roasted Peppers
- Chickpea Beet Salad
And, always, seek health consciously.
