lettuce and walnut salad with mustard-dill vinaigrette
Garlic-toasted walnuts coated, crunchy romaine, and sweet carrots tossed in a mustard-dill vinaigrette make this a salad even non-salad people enjoy. Wait to toss everything together until the last possible minute to keep all the ingredients crisp.
Ingredients
salad
- 2 heads romaine lettuce (cut into 1" strips)
- 1 cup shredded carrots
- ½ cup roughly chopped walnuts
- garlic powder
- salt
mustard-dill vinaigrette
- ½ cup olive oil
- 2 tablespoon lemon juice
- 2 tablespoon apple cider vinegar (or white vinegar)
- 1 tablespoon dill weed (not dill seed)
- ½ teaspoon sugar
- ½ teaspoon salt
- ¼ teaspoon paprika
- ¼ teaspoon mustard powder
- ¼ teaspoon freshly cracked black pepper
Instructions
- Whisk all salad dressing ingredients together in a measuring cup or small bowl. Set aside.
- Heat 1 tablespoon oil in a medium skillet over low-medium heat. Toss walnuts in skillet with garlic and salt until very aromatic and the walnuts begin to take on a slightly darker color. Keep an eye on these — if you don’t keep them moving around the pan, they might burn!
- Remove the toasted walnuts from the pan onto a paper towel. When cool enough to touch, taste one and add more garlic salt as needed.
- Chop whole head of romaine in thin approximately 1″ strips from top to bottom. Make your strips thinner as you get closer to the pale white stem — that part of the leaf is more bitter than the top. Rinse, along with carrots, in a salad spinner, and spin thoroughly to dry.
- Right before serving, toss lettuce and carrots together in a salad bowl. Whisk the dressing again. Pour over the salad and toss until the dressing evenly coats the lettuce leaves. Garnish with walnuts.