Easy Holiday Salad

If you volunteered to bring the salad to your next holiday meal, today I'm going to show you how to make the best holiday salad. This recipe takes just about 10 minutes of effort, and it's tossed with an easy apple cider vinaigrette that everyone will love. To make this salad dressing, you'll need three tablespoons of apple cider vinegar, a third cup of extra virgin olive oil, one tablespoon of spicy brown mustard, one finely minced clove of garlic, three tablespoons of honey, and a quarter teaspoon each of fine sea salt and ground black pepper. Stir the dressing together until it looks smooth. You can make this dressing up to three days in advance and store it in the fridge to make your life easier for a big holiday meal. Just make sure you bring the dressing back to room temperature at least one hour before you plan on serving it, because it can thicken up when it's chilled in the fridge. In a pinch, you can also run the sealed jar under warm running water until the dressing is easy to pour. When you're ready to serve this salad, the assembly is a breeze. I like to start with a box of pre-washed mixed greens to make life as easy as possible, but you can also use a large head of chopped romaine lettuce. Next, you'll need to dice one large apple. I'm using a Honeycrisp apple today, but any variety will work. I also like to thinly slice a quarter of a red onion and sprinkle that over the salad. Next, you'll need a half cup of dried cranberries, a half cup of pecans, or any other type of nut that you have on hand, and finally, I like to add a half cup of crumbled gorgonzola on top. I realize that blue cheese is not everyone's favorite, so you can also use feta cheese instead, or you can serve the cheese on the side and let everyone who likes the cheese spoon it onto their individual portions. Shake the dressing jar to make sure it's well-mixed, then drizzle it onto the salad just before serving. This salad has the perfect balance of sweet and tangy flavors with plenty of crunch, and I love how easy it is to make during the busy holiday season. I hope you'll enjoy this holiday salad as much as I do, and be sure to check out my other videos here for more fast and easy real food recipes.