In honor of my month of healthy eating on the blog, I of course felt obligated to throw a token bunch of kale into my cart at the grocery store. No arm twisting necessary — kale is one of my favorite greens, and still seems to be oh-so-trendy at the moment. So I was ready to experiment with some new kale chips, or a fancy kale pasta, or some sort of kale soup. But as tends to happen, the kale got a little buried in my refrigerator, and wasn’t discovered until a few hours before I left town for Sundance. Oops!
So at the last second, I decided to whip up a healthy salad before leaving for the airport. And as seems to be a growing trend whenever I cook and photograph a recipe in a big hurry, it somehow miraculously turned out to be really good and really pretty. Go figure!
I’ve been on a kale and cranberry kick lately, so I went the “warm” route and sauted up some shallots and garlic and cranberries for a sweet and savory vinaigrette, then topped it all with some sliced almonds. I meant to also crumble on some cheese, but it turned out that the salad was great (and arguably a little healthier) without it. Soooo good, friends!!
So whether this is your first time making a kale salad or your 100th, you’ve gotta check out the recipe for this one.
The key to a good kale salad is taking an extra minute or two to massage the kale and soften it. Awkward sounding? Yes. Essential to soft, delicious greens? Yes.
It’s easy. Anytime you make a kale salad, just toss the kale with a little salt and oil and rub it in for a minute until the kale turns nice and soft and darkens slightly. So worth it.
Besides that, the rest of the salad is a breeze as well! Here’s the quick how-to:
First, get those two main ingredients ready to go — some good fresh kale, and dried cranberries.
Heat some oil in a large skillet, then saute up the shallots, garlic, cranberries, lemon juice, vinegar, and a bit of honey for the vinaigrette. The cranberries will plump up just a bit while cooking, and will be extra sweet and juicy. Mmmm.
Then spoon the mixture on top of your (massaged) kale, give it a good toss, then sprinkle it with some toasted almonds.
And voila! In just 10 minutes or so, this gorgeous kale salad is ready to go.
Kale Salad with Warm Cranberry Almond Vinaigrette
- Prep Time: 2 minutes
- Cook Time: 8 minutes
- Total Time: 10 minutes
- Yield: 2 -4 servings 1x
Description
This healthy kale salad is topped with a warm cranberry almond vinaigrette.
Ingredients
- 3 Tbsp. olive oil, divided
- 1 shallot, peeled and thinly sliced
- 3 cloves garlic, coarsely chopped
- 1 cup dried cranberries
- 2 Tbsp. red wine vinegar
- 2 teaspoons honey
- juice and zest of half a lemon
- 1/8 tsp. salt
- 1/8 tsp. black pepper
- 1 bunch kale, very thinly sliced
- 1/4 cup sliced almonds
- (optional) 1/4 cup crumbled blue cheese or goat cheese
Instructions
- Heat 2 Tbsp. oil in a large saute pan over medium-high heat. Add shallot and saute for at least 5 minutes or until tender. Add garlic and saute for 1 minute. Then add cranberries, red wine vinegar, honey and lemon juice and zest, and stir to combine. Season with salt and pepper.
- In a large bowl, toss the kale with olive oil and an extra pinch of salt, and massage kale with your fingers for 1 minute until tender. Add in the cranberry/shallot mixture and almonds, and toss to combine. Serve topped with crumbled cheese if desired.
Loved this recipe. And learned how good it is to massage kale with olive oil and salt to soften it. Looking forward to eating the leftover tomorrow!
Thanks Mado, happy you enjoyed it!
Made this Kale salad yesterday. Was out of almonds so substituted pecans, absolutely delicious. Making a double batch fir a party next weekend. Thanks
Thanks Wilma, so glad you liked it!
I couldn’t stop eating this!!!! YUMMY!!!!
Yay! So glad you enjoyed it!!
I made this last night with your egg drop soup for a quick, light dinner, and both were fabulous and so simple to make! Thanks for the delish recipes! ❤️
This looks and sounds heavenly! My best friend and co-blogger, Kate, just recently introduced me to the amazing-ness that Kale is. I CANNOT wait to try this (with maybe a little Goat Cheese too?!). Thank you for sharing this!
I absolutely love using kale in a salad, it’s so much more flavorful than lettuce and super more nutritious too. I’ve made Kale salads before but I’ve never heard of ”massaging” the kale, LOL!!, sounds like fun and it makes sense. I will make this salad for dinner tonight, so glad I found it on Pinterest. Thank you for sharing.
This was delicious! I made it, but as I was the only one to eat it, I only prepared as much kale as I would eat. I put some of the dressing on and refrigerated the rest. I got 4 servings out of it. I warmed the dressing a bit each time I ate it.
I made this salad last night with a little apprehension of eating kale that wasn’t braised or cooked. Let me just say that it was fantastic! I think the massaging of the kale really made a huge difference.
Did you use sweetened dried cranberries (like Ocean Spray) or dried unsweetened cranberries? And if you used unsweetened cranberries, where do you buy it?
I used sweetened dried cranberries, but either would work. :)
I loved this salad! I’m always looking for healthy yummy ways to eat kale and this fit the bill! So delicious, thanks for sharing it:)