If you think salad and your mind immediately screams, “Boring!” then maybe you’re not trying the right recipes. I admit, my salad game needs some work. When I throw a salad together, it’s mostly just lettuce and maybe some peppers and onions and cheese if I’m feeling fancy. At best, it’s a skimpy side dish. However, it is possible for salads to take the spotlight at mealtime, and this recipe shared by Jill from Kitchen Fun with My 3 Sons is a real showstopper.
A mistake many people make with salads is loading them up with sugary, fatty dressings and fixings, which takes a normally healthier option and transforms it into a salad that could be nutritionally worse than a Big Mac! But, Jill’s recipe for loaded broccoli salad is hearty, creamy, crunchy and, thanks to a few substitutions, a low-carb alternative to the traditional broccoli salad.
The recipe’s ingredients include broccoli, cauliflower, bacon, colby jack cheese, red onion, red wine vinegar, clover honey, mayonnaise, granulated sugar, salt, pepper and plain Greek yogurt. The yogurt is the base ingredient for the dressing and helps keep the carbs reasonable.
Pulling this salad together is pretty simple. The only cooking involved is frying up the bacon. Other than that, you’ll need to get out your cutting board to chop up the veggies and cube the cheese into bite-sized pieces.
The decadent-looking dressing is literally whipped up in a jiffy by using a whisk to bring together the ingredients. Then, it goes in the refrigerator to await the completed salad.
If you’re following the keto diet, Jill recommends using all mayo and sour cream instead of yogurt (she says the honey is essential for flavoring the yogurt) and swapping a keto-friendly sugar substitute for the granulated sugar. You’ll definitely want to read her recipe notes for clarification before you get started.
Once the cooking and chopping is done, the dressing and salad get mixed together into one incredibly colorful dish that has enough meat, cheese and veggies to make up a meal instead of just a side player to the main course.
Enjoy!