Twenty-three vegan salads worth actually making. Eleven are ours and twelve are from cooks we read.
Some are five minute can openers. A couple are closer to dinner. A few keep for days, and we have said which.
Every one of them works without oil. Where a recipe uses it, there is a line at the bottom telling you what to do instead.
1. Vegan Cobb Salad
A Cobb is a composed salad. Everything sits in its own row instead of being tossed, and that is the whole point of it.
Seasoned tofu and chickpeas stand in for the meat and egg, with watercress, avocado, cherry tomatoes, carrot and cucumber filling the other rows. Twenty minutes to put together.
Prep the parts ahead, keep them in separate containers, and build it at the table.
Oil-free: The dressing is half a cup of olive oil. Blend a quarter cup of raw cashews into the vinegar, shallot and Dijon instead, with a splash of water.
Get the recipe from Nuts and Twigs.
2. Chickpea Avocado Salad
Nine ingredients, five minutes, one bowl. Chickpeas, red pepper, spring onion, avocado, lime and a lot of cilantro.
The fastest thing on this list, and nothing gets cooked. Make it ahead if you like, but fold the avocado in at the last minute so it stays green.
Oil-free: One tablespoon in the whole bowl and the avocado is already doing that job. Leave it out, add more lime.
Get the recipe from Flavorful Eats.
3. Vegan Roast Potato Salad
Roast potatoes instead of boiled, and it is meant to be eaten warm. Capers, dill, parsley, spring onion and vegan bacon through the middle.
It was written for leftover roasties, which is the best argument we know for roasting extra on Sunday.
Oil-free: The dressing is built on vegan mayonnaise. Blend silken tofu or soaked cashews with the same mustard, lemon and white wine vinegar.
Get the recipe from Yum Vegan Lunch Ideas.
4. Black Bean Mango Salad
Sweet mango against black beans, corn, red onion and green chili. Fifteen minutes and most of it comes out of cans.
The lime in the dressing keeps the avocado from browning, so this is one of the very few salads here that is better on the second day.
Oil-free: Two tablespoons, against maple syrup and a whole lime. Drop the oil. A ripe mango gives up enough juice to carry it.
Get the recipe from Sunglow Kitchen.
5. Edamame Crunch Salad
Edamame, a cup of cashews, red pepper and carrot under a blended ginger, miso and tahini dressing.
There is no lettuce anywhere in it, which means it does not go soggy. Avocado Skillet says it holds five days already dressed.
That makes this the one to build on a Sunday for the week.
Oil-free: A third of a cup of oil goes in the blender. Leave it out and raise the tahini to three tablespoons, then thin with water until it pours.
Get the recipe from Avocado Skillet.
6. Avocado Black Bean and Corn Salad
Ten minutes, almost entirely from cans, and enough beans and corn in it to count as a meal. Lime, garlic and jalapeno do the rest.
Eat it the day you make it. There is a good trick on the original for layering it into jars with the dressing at the bottom if you want to take it to work.
Oil-free: One tablespoon of oil against three of lime juice. The lime already outnumbers it. Just leave it out.
Get the recipe from The Herbeevore.
7. Chickpea Beet Salad
Ours. Beets and chickpeas under a tahini dressing, earthy and a little sweet.
Oil-free: Nothing to change. We wrote it this way.
8. Chickpea Tuna Salad
Also ours, and the most popular recipe on the site. Mashed chickpeas with nori stirred through, which is where the flavor of the sea comes from.
Sandwich, cracker, or straight out of the bowl. The nori is the whole trick.
Oil-free: Nothing to change. The creaminess is tahini, not mayonnaise.
9. Southwestern Quinoa Salad
Quinoa, black beans, zucchini, corn and peppers, all of it cooked in one pan in thirty minutes.
It makes eight servings and keeps four days, which makes this the meal-prep one. Good warm and good at room temperature.
Oil-free: The two tablespoons here are for sauteing, not dressing. Use a few tablespoons of the stock instead and keep the pan moving.
Get the recipe from Happi Homemade.
10. Black Bean Chickpea Salad
Two legumes in one bowl with cherry tomatoes, cucumber, red onion, lemon and cumin.
The recipe looks long because it starts from dried beans in an Instant Pot. Open two cans instead and it is a five minute salad. Best the day it is made.
Oil-free: One tablespoon, easily skipped. There is lemon juice in the dressing already.
Get the recipe from Everyday Nourishing Foods.
11. Vegan Crispy Rice and White Bean Salad
The crisped rice is the reason to make it. Cooked brown rice and sliced carrots go onto a sheet pan for half an hour until the rice turns crunchy.
White beans, celery, spring onion and avocado go in raw afterwards, with a lime dressing. No lettuce, so it keeps about four days.
Oil-free: The rice is tossed in a tablespoon of oil to crisp. Parchment and a hotter oven get you most of the way. Swap the honey for maple syrup while you are there.
Get the recipe from Avocado Skillet.
12. Roasted Vegetable Salad
Warm rather than cold, and closer to a dinner than anything else here. Whole eggplants, peppers and tomatoes go into a hot oven for forty-five minutes.
Then you slip the skins off and chop them through dill, parsley and red onion. It keeps five days in the fridge and six weeks in the freezer, which no other salad on this list can say.
Oil-free: Nothing is roasted in oil. The three tablespoons go on at the very end as a dressing, so all you do is not pour them.
Get the recipe from Top Moms Ideas.
13. Greek Artichoke Cauliflower Rice Salad
Cauliflower rice in place of grain, with artichoke hearts, olives, grape tomatoes, cucumber and pepper. Fifteen minutes and no cooking at any point.
Lauren Kelly serves the leftovers over spinach the next day, which is a good idea.
Oil-free: The dressing is mostly the quarter cup of olive oil. Use lemon juice, a crushed clove of garlic and a spoon of tahini. Buy artichokes in brine, not marinated.
Get the recipe from Lauren Kelly Nutrition.
14. Raw Vegan Taco Salad
Nothing in it goes near heat. Walnuts and mushrooms get pulsed with paprika, oregano and nutritional yeast into a taco filling, over romaine with avocado, peppers and cherry tomatoes.
A cilantro and lime yogurt dressing goes over the top. Ten minutes and it feeds four.
Keep the walnut mixture apart from the leaves if you have leftovers.
Oil-free: Nothing to change. This one never had any.
Get the recipe from The All Natural Vegan.
More oil-free salads from our kitchen
Every salad we publish is written without oil from the start. These are the ones readers come back to most.
- Alfalfa Sprouts Salad
- Refreshing Zucchini Salad
- Creamy Vegan Potato Salad
- Fresh Cucumber Carrot Salad
- Avocado Quinoa Salad with Roasted Peppers
- Easy Summer Quinoa Salad
And, always, seek health consciously.
Nine more of ours, no oil in any of them
These are the salads we actually eat, so there is no adaptation note needed on any of them. Calories are per serving, because a salad that comes to 68 calories and a salad that comes to 461 are not the same kind of meal, and it is useful to know which one you are making.
15. Chickpea Mediterranean Salad
Ten minutes and a can opener. Chickpeas, sweetcorn, cucumber and tomato. Serves two at 323 calories, which makes it a lunch rather than a side. Get our recipe.
16. Colorful Bean Salad
The heaviest thing on this page and deliberately so. Two cans of beans, quinoa and green peas, at 461 calories a serving. This one is dinner. Get our recipe.
17. Easy Summer Quinoa Salad
Quinoa over three cups of baby greens with tomato and cucumber. Seventeen minutes, 240 calories a serving. Get our recipe.
18. Roasted Peppers Quinoa Salad with Chickpeas
Five roasted peppers do most of the work here, and a jar of them makes this a ten-minute job. 253 calories, serves two. Get our recipe.
19. Vegan Peach Salad with Beans
Peach with cucumber, avocado and red onion. It sounds wrong and it is the best thing we make in August. Ten minutes, 315 calories. Get our recipe.
20. Creamy Vegan Potato Salad
Two pounds of potatoes with kidney beans and dill pickles, and no mayonnaise anywhere. Serves five at 292 calories. Cool the potatoes before you dress them and some of their starch turns into fiber on the way. Get our recipe.
21. Refreshing Zucchini Salad
Raw zucchini with tomato, red pepper and avocado. Ten minutes, nothing cooked, 317 calories. Get our recipe.
22. Fresh Cucumber Summer Salad
Cucumber, radishes, sweetcorn and dill. At 68 calories a serving this is the clearest example on the page of a salad that is a side and not a meal. Put it next to something with beans in it. Get our recipe.
23. Easy Avocado Pasta Salad
Small pasta with sweetcorn, carrot and an avocado dressing that needs no oil because the avocado already is the fat. Fifteen minutes, serves four, 199 calories. Get our recipe.
The thing that decides whether a salad is lunch
Look back at the calorie numbers and the pattern is not subtle. The salads that hold you until dinner all have a bean, a grain or a potato in them. The ones that do not are 68 to 240 calories, which is a snack in the shape of a meal.
Leaves run about 100 calories a pound. Beans and grains run 350 to 600. Your stomach holds roughly a litre, so you cannot fix a light salad by eating more of it, because there is a ceiling on what will fit. Add the bean, or accept that it is a side.
The other half of the job is the dressing, and that is its own guide.
