Apple Walnut Harvest Salad

This apple walnut harvest salad is the perfect throw together light, fresh, and healthy meal.  Start with a bed of mixed greens, top with dried cranberries, apricots, blue cheese, apples, and walnuts. Include any other ingredients you like and finish with an easy vinaigrette.

We enjoy this salad year round, but it’s especially great in the fall when you can use fresh apples. And if you’re a regular visitor to this blog then you probably already know that we have a fall apple picking tradition and love using them in a variety of recipes.

Some of our fresh apple favorite recipes:

• homemade applesauce (sometimes we make our applesauce in the Instant Pot)
• apple crisp
• apple brie panini
• chai apple butter
• Instant pot apple pie steel cut oats

But fall is a great time of year for salads like this fall pecan and pear salad so we wanted to incorporate apples into a salad.  The inspiration for this salad was a pre-made salad we sometimes find at Wegmans. It includes dried fruit and walnuts which are a great pairing.

And, who doesn’t love blue cheese? If you don’t, feel free to skip it.  We really love all the flavor pairings that come together in this harvest salad.

We prefer using fresh apples, but there are plenty of other flavorful ingredients in this harvest salad so it will still taste great even if you end up using store-bought apples.

The Easy Vinaigrette Dressing

For this salad, we just made a quick and easy vinaigrette.  Nothing too strong in flavor because the other ingredients have plenty to share.  Basically, just combine equal parts olive oil and vinegar (we used white wine vinegar, but apple cider vinegar would work as well).  Whisk together with salt and pepper and it’s ready for the salad.

I sometimes make a larger batch in a small mason jar so I can shake it instead of using a whisk.  Or you can whiz it together in a small blender–I like to blend sometimes to create a thicker vinaigrette, but it isn’t necessary (especially if you don’t feel like cleaning your blender).  If you want a more flavorful dressing, try the apple cider dressing we used on our pear harvest salad.

 

 

 

Looking for some other great salads? Here are a few you might want to check out:

• wheat berry salad with a mixed berry vinaigrette
• easy bean salad with pecans (vegan and gluten-free)
• simple Caprese salad with toasted walnuts