Kale Salad with Cherry Tomatoes and olive oil dressing is a healthy salad recipe! This easy salad includes massaged kale, cherry tomatoes and sweet peppers to make it a gorgeous rainbow salad! This salad is perfect for family dinners and big crowds.
Kale Salad Recipe
Do you ever have a meal that you become obsessed with? All of a sudden you don’t want a different meal every night, you want this one dish every single night until you get sick of it (which doesn’t seem because possible because you love it so much). That’s how I feel about this kale salad recipe! I LOVE IT!
I’ve been living on this salad for lunch and dinner. Even if Matthew talks me into making something else for dinner, I have a big side dish of this salad because I crave it so badly! A few years ago I wasn’t even that into kale, and then we started growing it and my life was changed forever. Move over lettuce and arugula, there’s a new best green for salads in town and it’s name is kale!
Cherry Tomato Salad
This salad is healthy and only needs a few ingredients. Besides kale, you’ll need cherry tomatoes and some beautiful sweet peppers which is going to give it that rainbow look. Cherry tomatoes are juicy and the peppers are sweet (try my sweet pepper soup too!), perfect compliments to the kale.
You will need full pint of cherry tomatoes for this recipe. Not only do cherry tomatoes add color to this rainbow salad, but each bite of a cherry tomato is bursting with flavor. During garden season when we’re picking cherry tomatoes by the bucket, this salad is made multiple times a week. I can’t get enough!
Kale Salad Dressing
For the olive oil dressing you will need:
- 1/3 cup olive oil
- 2 tablespoons lemon juice
- 1/4 cup Parmesan cheese
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- 1/4 teaspoon pepper
- pinch of red pepper flakes
Once you make a simple homemade olive oil dressing, you’ll never buy another bottle in the store! Instead of using a commercial dressing we’re going to make our own with olive oil + lemon juice which I think makes the best salad dressing.
Sometimes I even double or triple this salad dressing recipe so I can keep an extra jar of it in the fridge!
How to Massage Kale
Yes, I really just wrote that as a title! But hear me out… massaging kale is really important!
The key to a great kale salad is you need to massage the olive oil into the kale. If you’re never made a kale salad, that might sound silly, but massaging the kale is so important! Pour in the olive oil and spend a a few minutes massaging the kale between your fingers so it’s fully coated with the olive oil.
Don’t leave any kale untouched, really get in there and massage it! If you do a taste test with 2 kale salads, one massaged and one not massaged – I can guarantee the massaged kale will always be the winner! It’s so important for flavor!
Now add the rest of the beautiful veggies… it’s looking like a rainbow in that bowl!
And the rest of your ingredients, including your dressing and Parmesan cheese.
Mix everything around with a fork. And just like that, your tasty Kale Salad is ready! Wasn’t that easy?
I often have a giant bowl of this for dinner as my main dish (you can add chicken or shrimp if you want too!), but it makes the perfect side dish too. Besides that, it’s a hit for picnics and parties (like that graduation party that might be coming up!).
Enjoy!
More Kale Recipes
Looking for more kale recipes? Try my:
More Salad Recipes
Looking for more salad recipes? Try my:
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Kale Salad with Cherry Tomatoes
PrintIngredients
- 10 oz kale rinsed and chopped up
- 1/3 cup olive oil
- 1 pint cherry tomatoes halved
- 3 small sweet peppers chopped
- 2 tablespoons lemon juice
- 1/4 cup Parmesan cheese
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- 1/4 teaspoon pepper
- 1 pinch red pepper flakes
Instructions
- Add kale to a large bowl. Pour olive oil on top and massage kale for 2 minutes, making sure to massage the olive oil into all the kale.
- Add the rest of the ingredients on top and stir gently with a fork.
- Serve immediately or place in refrigerator if you are serving in a few hours.
Eleanor Veronica says
Yummy and healthy salad recipe. I try this and I really like it. Also full of nutritious so also serve to my child. from now i be your regular reader so keep sharing more recipes.