We should be eating more salads this winter

There’s a common misconception that salads are at their peak during the warm seasons. By springtime, we’re already inundated with recipes galore. Try this herby pearl couscous and sugar snap pea salad, the New York Times insists. Or a white bean, feta and quick-pickled celery salad. How about a grilled salmon salad with lime, chiles and herbs, complete with a dipping sauce-inspired dressing?

Don’t get me wrong, all of these recipes sound delicious — and I’d try them in a heartbeat. But their abundance, often limited to certain months here in the Northeast, points to a larger flaw within the greater salad discourse: there’s very little hype for salads in the winter. Indeed, winter foods seem to be limited to comfort meals. They’re hearty, warm, cheesy, creamy and indulgent — just a few words that are part of the season’s culinary vernacular. That includes mashed potatoes, chicken pot pie and casserole, or big pots of soup, chowder, gumbo and jambalaya. Salad is merely an afterthought.

Wintertime salads may be an oxymoron for some, but to me, they’re a necessity. Growing up, my mother would make a simple salad of sliced cucumbers, tomatoes, red onions, and lemons, drizzled with salt, served alongside homemade curries, spiced rice and steamed fish fillets wrapped in banana leaf parcels. The salad transcended seasons and temperatures. During the warmer months, it offered a bit of reprieve from the outdoor heat and celebrated the season’s most prized produce. During the winter, it offered some much-needed freshness — and a sense of equilibrium between the cooked and uncooked. Eating raw salads year-round was commonplace in my family’s household. Unbeknownst to us, we were also partaking in a sort of quiet rebellion, indulging in something that’s not neatly defined as cold-weather cuisine.

That’s all to say that I’m a huge fan of eating salads in the winter. It’s good for the soul and palate. Depriving yourself of that joy — especially during a time when there’s already less daylight and more gloom — is simply a disservice to your overall well-being. It’s also a disservice to the beautiful, rich produce items that winter has to offer. There’s kale, collard greens, Swiss chard, spinach and mustard greens — a medley of leafy green vegetables that are best enjoyed massaged in olive oil, slow-cooked or sautéed. There’s cabbage and brussels sprouts — cruciferous veggies that are divine pickled. There’s winter squash (butternut, acorn, spaghetti, kabocha and delicata…just to name a few), sweet potatoes and yams, which are exceptional roasted. And fruits, which range from varieties of pear to bright citruses like orange and grapefruit. The list is plentiful.

In the aftermath of a January snowstorm that brought over a foot of snow across New York City, there’s nothing more that I want than bowls upon bowls of fresh salad. To cope with the relentless cold, I’ve been living off frozen meals, namely Trader Joe’s cheese-filled eggplant pasta, and home-cooked slow-cooker chili, baked gnocchi and chicken noodle soup. It’s already quite hot inside my shoebox apartment as the radiators clank away, drowning out my upstairs neighbor’s heavy footsteps with their cacophonous symphony. I’m overstimulated and overheated. And yet, I’m too lazy to step outside to seek relief in the cold yet unusually quiet streets of my neighborhood. Instead, I find solace in food. My body needs something fresh yet dense and nourishing. I crave a salad.

I recently came across food writer and food stylist Susan Spungen’s Substack post, “Winter salads are the best salads.” It’s a defense of winter salads and includes several recipes, like one for a celery and radish salad with fig vinaigrette and another for a citrus salad with green olives, burrata and honey-roasted pistachios. They’re inspiring and tantalizing, each salad photo a beautiful showcase of visual media at its finest. The salads brim with color and vibrancy, inviting us to rethink how we nourish our bodies when we’re hit with cold weather.

“But Susan, it’s not really peak produce season, you might say,” Spungen writes. “And to that I say: think about winter produce in a different way. There are so many vegetables (and fruits) in the grocery store that are perfect for sturdier winter salads; ones that last a few days even, and work well as a side dish to brighten up your plate or with a protein plopped on top for lunch.”

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I’ve adopted a similar philosophy when making my go-to recipe for a winter salad. There’s not much of a formula to my assembly. I start by preparing my warm ingredients, which are roasted sweet potatoes. I then add my leafy greens (kale and arugula) and layer with a medley of toppings that are simple and readily available. They are a mix of fresh and preserved items along with seasonal and evergreen staples.

There’s a lot that goes into this salad. So much so that I was struggling to come up with an adequate name for my recipe. At its core, this salad is abundant, which feels apt for a winter salad.

As Salon’s Ashlie D. Stevens writes in her own guide for putting together the ultimate winter salad, “Winter salads demand a little more finesse than their warm-weather counterparts, but the effort is worth it. They are not just bowls of food; they are architecture, contrast, and comfort all in one. And if you build them with a few simple steps, they can be hearty, balanced, and endlessly satisfying.”