Fourteen salads with a bean, a grain or a root at the bottom of the bowl, so they hold you until the next meal.
They are grouped loosely by what does the filling. Beans first, then grains, then the starchy ones, then nuts.
Three are ours. All of them are oil-free or one swap away, and we have said which where it matters.
1. Black Bean Mango Salad
Two cans of black beans and a can of corn against ripe mango, red onion and green chili.
Fifteen minutes and it serves four. The lime in the dressing stops the avocado browning, so this is one of the few salads that is better on the second day.
Get the recipe from Sunglow Kitchen.
2. Chickpea Beet Salad
Ours. Beets and chickpeas with avocado, cucumber and tomato under a tahini dressing.
Earthy and a little sweet. It stains everything it touches, so choose the container before you toss it.
3. Lupini Bean and Caper Salad
Lupini beans carry roughly twice the protein of chickpeas and almost no starch, which is the reason to go looking for them.
With capers, olives, tomato, cucumber and avocado over leaves. Eight minutes, serves four, 184 calories a bowl.
Get the recipe from Dishing Out Plants.
4. Vegan Kale Caesar with Chickpea Croutons
Roasted chickpeas instead of bread croutons, so they stay crisp rather than going soft in the dressing.
Capers and pickled red onion give it the sharpness a Caesar needs without anchovies. Fifteen minutes, serves three, 268 calories.
Get the recipe from Zardy Plants.
5. Vegan Mexican Chopped Salad
Charred corn, two colors of pepper, tomato, black beans and avocado, everything chopped to the same size so each forkful gets all of it.
Twenty minutes, serves four, 347 calories. There are two teaspoons of olive oil in the dressing and the avocado makes them unnecessary.
Get the recipe from Happy Kitchen.
6. Roasted Peppers Quinoa Salad with Chickpeas
Also ours. Roasted peppers and chickpeas through quinoa with a garlic tahini dressing.
Under twenty minutes, and closer to five if the quinoa is already cooked and sitting in the fridge.
7. Easy Summer Quinoa Salad
Ours too. Quinoa with tomato, cucumber, greens and olives in an oil-free basil dressing.
Side dish or lunch, depending on how much goes in the bowl. Seventeen minutes.
8. Arugula Quinoa Salad
Quinoa and roasted sweet potato over arugula, with orange juice and tahini in the dressing and a little maple to round it.
Serves four at 448 calories. The recipe finishes with crumbled feta. Leave that off and add another spoonful of tahini instead.
Get the recipe from Hello Frozen Bananas.
9. Vegan Couscous Salad
Pearl couscous with cucumber, pepper, cherry tomatoes, chickpeas and olives, dressed with lemon and garlic.
Twenty minutes and it makes six, which is why this is the one that turns up at picnics.
Get the recipe from Happy Kitchen.
10. Spring Roll Salad
Everything from inside a spring roll, in a bowl, with none of the rolling. Vermicelli noodles, edamame, carrot, cucumber, mint and peanuts.
The peanut sauce is written oil-free. Twenty minutes and it serves four.
Get the recipe from Sunglow Kitchen.
11. Kale Sweet Potato Salad
Roasted sweet potato over massaged kale with red cabbage, carrot, cucumber and pepper, dressed with hummus thinned down with water.
Forty-five minutes, most of it the oven working on its own. Written oil-free from the start, so there is nothing to change.
Get the recipe from Fit Liz Kitchen.
12. Plantain Salad with Avocado Cilantro Lime
Plantain seasoned with smoked paprika, garlic and a little cayenne, served over leaves with corn, red onion and an avocado cilantro lime dressing.
Plantain is starchy rather than sweet, which is what makes this filling. Serves four, and it is written without oil or refined sugar.
Get the recipe from The All Natural Vegan.
13. Vegan Waldorf Salad
Apple, grape, celery and walnuts, the way a Waldorf should be, with chickpeas and blended tofu standing in for the mayonnaise.
Fifteen minutes and it makes eight servings. The walnuts are doing most of the work, so do not cut them back.
Get the recipe from Zardy Plants.
14. Spicy Indian Cucumber Peanut Salad
Cucumber with roasted peanuts, green chili, cilantro and lemon. Eight ingredients and two of them are optional.
Serves two at 233 calories. The peanuts are what make it a salad rather than a garnish.
Get the recipe from Everyday Nourishing Foods.
15. Chickpea Quinoa Salad with Peaches
Ours. Quinoa and chickpeas against cherry tomato, cucumber, avocado and ripe peach. 17 minutes, serves 2.
The peach is what makes it, and it only works when the fruit is properly ripe. Underripe peach just tastes like a hard apple in a salad.
16. Easy and Fresh Quinoa and Beans Salad
Also ours. Quinoa and a can of kidney beans with peas, carrot and romaine. 30 minutes, serves 4.
The quinoa is the reason this fills you up rather than leaving you looking in the fridge an hour later. Add the lettuce at the last minute if you are making it ahead.
17. Red Bean and Avocado Green Salad
Ours as well. A can of kidney beans with romaine, tomato, cucumber and avocado, and fresh turmeric root pressed through it.
Nothing is cooked and no oil goes in. The dressing is our almond caesar, which gets its creaminess from blended nuts.
18. Easy No Oil Basil Pesto Tomato Salad
Ours. Basil and walnuts blended into a pesto with no oil in it, spooned over sliced tomatoes. 10 minutes.
The walnuts are the fat, which is the whole trick. It makes more pesto than one plate needs, and the rest keeps for a couple of days.
Taking the oil out of a salad recipe
Where a recipe roasts vegetables in oil, a splash of broth on parchment does the same job at a slightly hotter oven.
Where it wants a creamy dressing, tahini, blended cashews or avocado get you there. Where the salad is already juicy, more lemon is usually enough on its own.
And, always, seek health consciously.
