Top 15 Salads of All Time

As The Sidesmith celebrates their second birthday, we share with you are top salads of all time from our picks to our followers favourites.

Collage of salad images with text overlay "Top 15 Salads of All Time"

With hundreds of salad recipes published, we stop to pick out our personal favourites as we celebrate 2 years of our culinary journey. Did your favourite make it to the list?

Happy Birthday to us! The Sidesmith turns 2, and as we continue to grow and build our salad recipe website, we reflect on all our triumphs, lessons learnt, and challenges faced.

For us, we have grown as recipe creators as we continue to stay creative by continually learning about new produce, new methods of cooking and how to expand our repertoire of complementing ingredients to create delicious food.

After 2 years and over hundreds of recipes, we are still invigorated by salads. We are often asked how on earth we keep coming up with ideas for recipes, and to be honest, some days are a struggle while other days the flood gates open up, and we just can’t stop.

The one constant that has remained for all of us is how the salads we make continue to surprise people, how a salad can be so flavoursome, so eccentric, or so darn delicious and yet crazy easy to put together.

This is what keeps us going, and we are forever grateful for our loyal followers, family and friends and our willing guinea pigs and taste testers.

To mark this wonderful occasion, we have each compiled a short list of our favourite salads. These are our personal favourites. The recipe we are very proud of.

Thank you once again for all the support that you show us. It truly is what gets us out of bed every morning! Our future is looking bright, and we are on a trajectory that excites us. And we hope you will continue to follow us on our food journey. Bon Appetit!

Amy’s Picks

soba noodles, pearl mushrooms, edamame, spring onions, cilantro and sesame seeds served in a grey bowl with fork on side

Pearl Oyster Mushroom Noodle Salad Recipe

1/15

Sammy is the queen of Asian inspired salads, and I am forever in awe of the deliciousness she brings to the table. I love how her mind can put these flavours together. This soba noodle salad is so good!

Bocconcini Salad with Caper Vinaigrette

Bocconcini Salad with Caper Vinaigrette

2/15

This salad from Sammy gets sooooo many comments. The colours are stunning, and the combination of tomatoes, capers, bocconcini, and strawberries is brilliant. And to think that no cooking is required! Love how a bunch of raw ingredients can be so delicious!

Kingfish Sashimi Salad with Pickled Radish in a white plate with black chopsticks

Kingfish Sashimi Salad with Pickled Radish

3/15

I often have these ideas in my head but never sure if they will turn out. Pickling the daikon in butterfly pea flower left me sleepless overnight as I was so excited to see the outcome in the morning. Paired with the freshest of kingfish, I hugged myself that day! LOL!

Tamarind Roasted Baby Eggplant Salad in an oval platter and red salad servers

Roasted Tamarind Eggplant Salad

4/15

Sometimes when I make a salad, I can’t picture how it will end up. But for this salad, I knew exactly how it would taste and how I would present it. The tangy tamarind is perfectly roasted into the spongy flesh of the baby eggplant. I always feel so happy when I serve this at a dinner party.

Fresh Fig Salad Recipe With Mango in a white plate

Fresh Fig Salad Recipe With Mango

5/15

I love this salad because it came about from leftovers. I remember staring at my fruit bowl and wondered how to create a salad that didn’t look like every other salad. Truth be told, the mango was starting to become a bit soft, so I decided to puree it. The results were great, and it has become one of our all-time summer favourites.

Phen’s Picks

Creamy Cucumber Avocado Salad on a grey plate with black cutlery and grey napkin

Creamy Cucumber Avocado Salad

6/15

I remember Amy creating this salad recipe in time for St Patrick’s Day – an all-green salad. I didn’t think I would fall in love with this as much as I did until I tried it.

The soft, crunchy and creamy texture combination of this salad works in perfect harmony, but what’s made this one of my favourites is that marriage of heat from the jalapeños and garlic dressing! So yum!

Charred Truss Tomato Salad with Stracciatella on a grey plate

Charred Truss Tomato Salad with Stracciatella

7/15

This is one of those simple salads that I love putting together when I have a few friends over at wine o’clock. Sweet, grilled truss tomatoes on a bed of oozy stracciatella di bufala, then topped with a herby mint and basil pesto. It’s so simple yet so inviting.

Balsamic Honey Roasted Figs and Halloumi Salad on a slate board

Balsamic Roasted Figs and Halloumi Salad

8/15

This salad is easily one of my favourites with its combination of simple ingredients – sweet balsamic roasted figs, salty, grilled halloumi, and peppery rocket. Each mouthful is a real flavour bomb. Now, if only they had figs all year round, I would make this more often!

Purple Cauliflower Salad with Lemon Mustard Tahini

Purple Cauliflower Salad with Lemon Mustard Tahini

9/15

Out of all the salads we have at The Devil Wears Salad, I’ve made this one the most. Not only does it use common ingredients I can find at the supermarket (you can replace the purple cauliflower with the common variety), but everyone I make it for loves it!

It’s the moreish combination of roasted cauliflower topped on a bed of creamy lemon garlic tahini that makes this a winner in my books.

Blueberry Salad with Plum Wine Infused Dragon fruit on a black plate with black cutlery served with lime wedges on the side

Plum Wine Infused Dragon Fruit Salad

10/15

Not only is this fruit salad crazily creative with its lightly boozed-up dragon fruit, but this wickedly delicious salad of fruits is then topped with mouth-watering zesty lime sugar crystals, which seriously makes the salad sing!

Just promise me you won’t lick the plate as I did that time?

Sammy’s Picks

Spicy Chinese Tofu Skin Salad in a speckled light brown bowl with chopsticks and blue napery

Spicy Chinese Tofu Skin Salad

11/15

I’ve selected this recipe because it is a favourite in my home. My kids are addicted to Lao Gan Ma chilli oil, and to be honest, anything with it they love. I can make it over and over again, and they never get bored.

There are times where I vary it a little by substituting cauliflower with carrot or marinated jellyfish (yup, you read right). Regardless there are never any leftovers.

Red Fruit Salad with Dark Chocolate Biscuit Soil in 2 wine glasses with a bunch of orchids on the side

Red Fruit Salad with Dark Chocolate Biscuit Soil

12/15

Before knowing Amy, I never knew a fruit salad could be so much more than, well, a fruit salad!

This delicious dessert recipe is stunning to serve and so delicious with a mix of sweet and tangy fruits. The dark chocolate biscuit soil just adds that something extra to give the wow factor. Great for kids and grown ups.

fennel courgette salad on a white plate in the middle with a smaller black plate filled with salad on the top left corner

Courgette Salad with Fennel and Citrus

13/15

The first time I made this salad for friends, they had never used raw fennel and courgette ribbons in a salad. They were pleasantly surprised by how refreshing it was, and the raw fennel did not have overly aniseed flavours.

It shows when you can mix ingredients that pair well, it can change their flavour profile. I just love the combination of crisp raw shaved fennel and courgette ribbons mixed with juicy citrus fruits and a light salad dressing.

Beetroot Cured Salmon Salad with Black Fish Roe on a black slate board with knife and fork

Beetroot Cured Salmon Salad with Black Fish Roe

14/15

Absolutely stunning. This beetroot cured salmon salad from Amy is beyond pretty and, of course, mouth-watering. I always refer back to this recipe for inspiration.

When I see it, I think, wow, I need to make salads like this. The delicate slices of homemade beetroot cured salmon layered with blackfish roe make the perfect entertaining salad.

brown mushrooms marinated in parsley, shallots, garlic, chilli flakes and vinegar served in a bowl with spoon on the side

Quick Pickled Mushrooms Recipe

15/15

I am not sure how many times I have made this salad for friends and myself at home. This is one of my go-to salads for picnics and definitely one I make if I know I have a busy week ahead.

It stores well in the fridge and is the perfect work at home lunch companion. My favourite combination is marinated feta spread over warm sourdough toast and topped with a generous serving of this quick pickled mushroom salad.

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10 Comments

  1. Elizabeth says:

    Loving this list! We’ve already tried several of the salads and every one is amazing! Thanks for sharing!

  2. What a beautiful, delicious and healthy collection you have here. I’m going to start with the aubergine and tamarind one today. Thank you soo much for sharing!

    1. Oh Ramona, girl after my own heart! that is honestly one of my all time favourite salads. They are perfect for the Christmas table too with the lovely pops of red.

  3. Luca - Ruoka on valmis says:

    This article is exactly what I have been looking for. It’s always so difficult to come up with new recipes for salads. Can’t wait to go through these!

    1. Oh no need to make them up! We have over 200 salad recipes on this site so hopefully you’ll find some that you’ll like!

  4. What a great collection of salads! Each one beautiful and I can’t wait to make my way through these recipes!

  5. Fabulous collection of really unique recipes. We love salads but always looking to try new ones!

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