This fall squash salad recipe is made with baby butter lettuce, pomegranate seeds, pear, avocado, creamy goat cheese, chicken, and of course, the most perfect roast delicata squash. Salads are a perfect lunch or dinner idea because they only take a few seconds to whip up, and they can be personalized pretty easily as well! In this recipe, I make my own pomegranate and shallot vinaigrette, and top the salad with even more fresh pomegranate seeds! Looking for a way to use some seasonal fall squash? Look no further!
Why I love this recipe:
This salad is SO good people. I mean seriously, I cannot believe how amazing it is. It is perfectly seasonal and can easily be adapted, plus, it takes such a small amount of time to make! All of the ingredients are healthy, and the end result is just so super beautiful. I mean seriously, look at this salad!
The Ingredients (and substitutes)
This salad recipe, as written, has quite a few ingredients, but trust me when I say that each one of them contributes to the salad in an amazing way. If you don’t like one or two of the ingredients, you can swap them for the substitutes I provided, but the recipe as written is just so delicious that I wouldn’t recommend swapping out a bunch.
- Baby Butter Lettuce: in my opinion, this is what makes the recipe so amazing. Using an amazing and good quality green cannot be beat when it comes to homemade salads. If you can’t find or don’t like baby butter lettuce, you can either use normal butter lettuce, red leaf lettuce, or baby spinach.
- Pear: this can be easily substituted for thinly sliced apple, or even chopped fresh figs for the little bit of sweetness.
- Cucumber: this is a bit odd, and I would not recommend swapping this out, but you can use celery if you must in place of the cucumber.
- Delicata Squash: this is actually very hard to find, so if you cannot find a delicata squash, feel free to use any kind of squash you like! It will all work for this recipe, just roast in cubes instead of slices.
- Red Onion: can easily be swapped for white or yellow onion!
- Avocado: omit or use extra goat cheese on top.
- Quinoa: this is optional to begin with, however, feel free to use short-grain brown rice or wild rice.
- Pomegranate Seeds: Use walnuts! They have the same crunch factor.
- Dressing: I would follow the dressing recipe as it is written, because messing with the proportions could change the texture or consistency.
The Directions:
After measuring your ingredients, the first step is to prep the squash for roasting and preheat the oven. Set it to 400 degrees fahrenheit and toss the slices squash in olive oil, salt and red pepper flakes. Roast for about 20 minutes, flipping halfway, to make sure they caramelize and brown on both sides.
Caramelize the red onions on a medium heat with olive oil and butter until they look like this:
Then, set aside and make the dressing.
In a blender, combine vinegar, honey, salt, pomegranate juice, and shallot. Blend on high speed until fully combined, then turn the speed down to low and drizzle the olive oil in through the top while blending to emulsify and create a thicker vinaigrette.
To actually make the salad, mix together the pomegranate vinaigrette and the butter lettuce leaves.
Add the shredded rotisserie chicken, cucumber, quinoa, and caramelized onions and mix, then add the rest of the ingredients (all but the pomegranate seeds and goat cheese) and mix together gently, as to not break apart the slices of pear or chunks of avocado.
Lastly, top with the delicious pomegranate seeds and goat cheese and serve!
My Notes:
- The quinoa and chicken are optional, but I would recommend adding them to the salad. If you want to use it as a main dish, these ingredients make it more filling. Without the quinoa and chicken, this salad is a side dish, but with them it can be a full meal.
- Be cautious with the vinaigrette. Adding too much vinegar can completely overtake every flavor and be super overpowering. Start with a little less than 1/4 cup, then taste. Same goes with salt in the dressing.
- This salad can be kept in the fridge for a few days. It’s super easy to bring to school or work as a packed lunch.
Happy cooking everybody! Here is the recipe available to print:
Fall Squash Salad
Ingredients
For the Salad
- 4-6 cups baby butter lettuce
- 1 large pear, thinly sliced
- 1 red onion, julienned
- 1 large english cucumber, chopped
- 1 rotisserie chicken, shredded (optional)
- 2 avocados, cubed
- 2 delicata squash cut in half, seeds removed, sliced thinly `
- 1 tsp red pepper flakes
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 1 tbsp olive oil
- 1/2 tbsp butter
- 2/3 cup cooked quinoa (optional)
- pomegranate seeds and goat cheese, to taste, for toppings
For the Dressing
- 1/2 cup olive oil
- 1/4 cup white balsamic or champagne vinegar
- 1/4 cup pomegranate juice
- 1 tbsp honey
- 1/2 shallot
- salt, to taste
Instructions
- Preheat your oven to 400 degrees f, and toss the delicata squash in olive oil, salt, and red pepper flakes until fully coated. When oven is preheated, cook for 10 minutes, then flip over each slice and cook for an additional ten minutes or until browned to your liking.
- In a pan on medium heat, add the butter or an additional drizzle of olive oil. When heated, add the julienned red onion and cook until caramelized and slightly brown. Set aside to cook.
- Combine all of the ingredients for the dressing but the olive oil in a blender and blend on high speed until fully combined. Then, turn the blender down to a lower speed and slowly drizzle in olive oil to emulsify it and make the dressing thick. After all olive oil has been added, blend for an additional 30 seconds.
- Toss the dressing and butter lettuce in a large bowl, then add the quinoa, caramelized onions, chicken, and cucumber until combined. Then add the rest of the ingredients except the pomegranate seeds and the goat cheese and gently toss as to not break the pears or smush the avocado chunks.
- Top with pomegranate seed and goat cheese, then serve.