I love great salad recipes, and some of my favorites include Waldorf salad, chicken pasta salad, ahi tuna salad, Asian cucumber salad and Tuscan kale salad. This shaved Brussels sprouts salad is perfect for the cold weather months and is filling, healthy and perfect as a light meal or side dish for a holiday dinner.
Brussels Sprout Salad Ingredients
How Do You Make Brussels Sprouts Salad?
Tips For The Perfect Salad
To save on prep time, you can buy pre-cooked bacon. Feel free to prepare the homemade dressing up to 5 days in advance. Store it in the fridge until you’re ready to use it. No red wine vinegar on hand? Try fresh lemon juice or apple cider vinegar as substitutes! I like to buy a block of feta and cut it up for this salad. You can use pre-crumbled feta that comes in a tub, but that is often coated in anti caking agents and just doesn’t taste quite as fresh as the block variety. You can also whisk the dressing together in a small bowl. This salad pairs well with main course options such as Cajun turkey, rib eye steak, smoked tri tip and honey baked ham.
Flavor Variations
This brussels sprout salad is great as-is, but you can easily change some of the ingredients to customize the flavors to your tastes. Enjoy this salad for everyday dinner or for festive Thanksgiving or Christmas meals. You can serve this salad with holiday favorites like honey glazed ham, green beans almondine and sweet potato souffle.
Brussels Sprouts: Look for bright green sprouts. Larger sprouts can be easier to cut. Avoid sprouts with dark spots or a lot of damaged leaves. Apples: Choose your favorite apples. I like red or pink apples for color contrast. I often choose pink lady, gala or fuji apples. Pomegranate Seeds: You can remove pomegranate seeds from pomegranates yourself or you can buy containers of pomegranate arils that are ready to eat in the produce section of your supermarket. Feta Cheese: Choose a block of feta cheese that will easily crumble. You can then crumble the feta cheese with a knife or by hand. Bacon: You will want cooked and diced bacon for this recipe. Simply use cooking shears to cut the bacon into small squares and cook it in a pan until crispy.
Put the olive oil, red wine vinegar, shallots, mustard, honey, salt and pepper in a jar. Cover the jar and shake to combine the dressing. Pour the dressing over the sprouts mixture. Toss gently to combine, then serve and enjoy.
Greens: While this salad is designed with Brussels sprouts in mind, you can also use broccoli slaw, shredded cabbage or mixed greens. Fruit: Feel free to swap out the apples for pears and the pomegranate seeds for dried cranberries. Cheese: No feta cheese on hand? Try using shaved parmesan, blue cheese or goat cheese instead. Protein: Make this salad a main course by adding grilled chicken breast, grilled turkey breast or sirloin steak. Toppings: For extra flavor, swap out the regular pecans for candied pecans. You can also substitute in other nuts and seeds such as candied walnuts, sliced almonds, sunflower seeds, pine nuts, roasted pumpkin seeds or pistachios. Savory: For a more savory version of this salad omit the pomegranate and apples. Add sliced red onion and grated parmesan cheese.
I love to serve Brussels sprouts salad as a unique side dish for Thanksgiving. Everyone always expects a standard green salad and people are delighted to find this colorful and festive concoction instead. If you’ve never tried Brussels sprout salad before, this is definitely the recipe to start with. It’s got the perfect combination of earthy, salty and sweet. I can’t get enough of it!
Brussels Sprout Salad Video
