Jicama Salad
While a simple green salad is always a “nice” option, I love to find new and interesting ingredients that really make a salad something special. For this recipe, I show you how to make a Jicama and Apple salad, served over some butter lettuce, that has a huge variety of flavors and textures. Those flavors and textures, enable the salad to really stands up as substantial portion of the meal (or frankly could be a meal on it’s own), rather than simply being a side salad. While I love this salad in Summer, great quality apples and jicama are good all year long, so give it a try any time. Hope you enjoy it as much as I do.
Jicama Recipe Overview & Keys to Success
To make the best Apple and Jicama Salad, make sure to pay attention to these few things:
- Make sure to use good quality ingredients. The apples need to be crisp and taste good. The Jicama should fresh, as should everything else. When you treat ingredients simply, they really do need to be high quality.
- I don’t think you need much dressing on this salad. Unlike many greens, the ingredients here already have substantial flavors, that you’re just trying to highlight and bring together with a light dressing. Add just a bit at a time and taste as you go
- Try to chop the apples and Jicama in consistent sizes...that will make for a better presentation and make it easier to eat
- You can mix the ingredients together 30 minutes to a hour a head of time, but don’t put them on the butter lettuce until the last minute. Otherwise, the lettuce can wilt and go limp on you
- Make sure you season with salt and pepper, taste and reseason if needed
- 1 apple diced into 1/2 inch pieces
- An equal amount of diced Jicama, cut to the same size
- 1 head of butter lettuce
- 1/4 cup toasted walnuts
- 2 tablespoons crumbled blue cheese
- 2 diced scallions
- 1 lemon for the juice
- 2 strips bacon cut and fried into lardons
- ~ 1 teaspoons Honey
- ~ 2 tablespoons Red wine vinegar
- ~ 3 tablespoons of olive oil
- Dice the bacon and cook it until crispy
- Toast the walnuts
- While they cook dice the apple (coat the diced apple in lemon juice to prevent them from turning brown), and the jicama
- Add the apple, jicama, bacon, walnuts, diced scallions, and blue cheese to a mixing bowl
- Drizzle in about half the honey, vinegar, and olive oil; season with salt and pepper and mix together
- Taste, and add more of the dressing and/or salt and pepper
- Cut the leaves from the butter lettuce, wash them, and lay them down on the serving plate
- Spoon the Jicama salad into the lettuce cups and serve
For this salad, I really like a light and refreshing white wine. Frankly sparkling wine would go great, but for everyday eating I’m more likely to grab a nice sauvignon blanc, that is fruity and floral.
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