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1
Cobb salad
The benchmark for a salad that eats like dinner: chicken, bacon, hard-boiled egg, avocado and blue cheese laid out in rows over chopped lettuce and tomato. Most accounts trace it to Robert Cobb at the Brown Derby in Los Angeles in 1937, though the date and creator are disputed.
The work is in the prep rather than the cooking, roughly half an hour of boiling, frying and chopping, so it rewards making extra chicken and eggs for the week. The original paired it with a sharp red wine vinegar and mustard dressing rather than ranch, and that bite is what keeps all the richness from turning heavy. Pack the dressing separately and it travels well.
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Chef salad
The least effort on this list for a properly filling plate. Strips of ham, turkey and Swiss or Cheddar go over crisp lettuce with hard-boiled egg, tomato and cucumber, and the only cooking is the eggs.
That makes it the salad to reach for on a weeknight when the fridge holds deli meat and not much else, ready in about fifteen minutes. Its weakness is the dressing, which too often comes from a bottle: a quick honey-mustard vinaigrette or a thin blue cheese dressing whisked with buttermilk lifts it from canteen fare to something worth looking forward to.
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Caesar salad
On its own a Caesar is a starter; with grilled chicken or a few anchovy-laced croutons the size of a thumb it becomes a meal, and the dressing is the reason to bother. Caesar Cardini is generally credited with improvising it at his restaurant in Tijuana on 4 July 1924, using romaine, egg, Parmesan, lemon and Worcestershire sauce.
Making the dressing yourself takes ten minutes with a whisk: egg yolk, garlic, lemon, anchovy and good olive oil, finished with plenty of grated Parmesan. Grill the chicken while the croutons toast and the whole thing is on the table in about half an hour. Romaine wilts quickly once dressed, so it packs only if the dressing goes in a separate pot.
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Taco salad
The Tex-Mex answer for anyone who finds most salads too polite. Spiced beef or turkey mince, black or pinto beans, Cheddar, tomato, avocado and crushed tortilla chips over shredded iceberg add up to a plate as filling as a burrito, with more crunch.
Skip the deep-fried tortilla bowl and a homemade version is about twenty-five minutes, most of it browning the meat. A dressing of salsa loosened with lime juice and soured cream or yoghurt beats bottled ranch and keeps the flavours bright. The chips go soft within minutes of dressing, so add them at the last moment, and pack the warm meat apart from the leaves if taking it to work.
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Chinese chicken salad
Shredded chicken, cabbage and lettuce with crisp fried noodles or wonton strips, toasted almonds or sesame and a gingery soy and sesame dressing: a Southern California restaurant staple and one of the few big salads that is better a few hours after dressing. Madame Wu's Garden in Santa Monica is the name most often attached to it, though recipes for Chinese chicken salad were printed decades earlier and her role is disputed.
Cabbage is why it packs so well, since it softens slightly rather than wilting, so dress everything but the crunchy toppings in the morning. A shop-bought roast chicken brings the work down to about twenty minutes, mostly shredding and whisking. Fry the crisp toppings fresh; stale ones taste of old oil.
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Salade niçoise
Tuna, hard-boiled egg, black olives, anchovies and tomatoes make a composed plate with real staying power, and the version most people know adds boiled new potatoes and green beans, which turn it into a full dinner. Purists in Nice reject the cooked vegetables, and some insist on tuna or anchovies, never both; outside the city the heartier version is the norm.
Good tuna jarred in olive oil suits it better on a weeknight than seared fresh steak. Allow about forty minutes, mostly for potatoes, beans and eggs that can all boil at once. A plain mustard and red wine vinegar dressing suits it, and because the components sit side by side rather than tossed, it holds up well in a lunchbox.
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Salade lyonnaise
Proof that a salad can be bistro comfort food. Bitter frisée, hot fried lardons, butter-browned croutons and a poached egg come together under a sharp wine-vinegar vinaigrette, and breaking the yolk into the leaves makes a second, richer dressing.
It is quick, about twenty minutes, but it has to be eaten the moment it is made: the warm bacon and soft egg are the point, so this is a dinner salad, not one to pack. Add a second egg and good bread and it is a proper meal for one. If frisée is hard to find, dandelion leaves are the traditional alternative.
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French Lentil Salad with Goat's Cheese
The best vegetarian option here for anyone who needs a salad to last until the evening. Small French green lentils, such as the protected Puy variety, keep their shape when cooked, so they take a robust mustard vinaigrette without turning to mush. Toss them while still warm with shallot, carrot, celery and parsley, and crumble goat's cheese over at the end.
Simmering the lentils takes about twenty-five minutes, and the whole salad around three-quarters of an hour. The reward is that it keeps for several days in the fridge and tastes better on the second, which makes it the most reliable packed lunch on the list. Add the cheese and some walnuts just before eating.
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Fattoush
A Levantine bread salad that becomes a full meal with a tin of chickpeas and some crumbled feta. Crisp pieces of toasted or fried pitta soak up a lemon and olive oil dressing sharpened with sumac and, ideally, a spoonful of pomegranate molasses, over cucumber, tomato, radish, herbs and, in Palestinian kitchens, lemony purslane.
It is one of the quickest here, about twenty minutes, and toasting the pitta rather than frying it keeps it lighter without losing the crunch. The bread is the catch for packing: it softens within an hour of dressing, so carry it and the dressing separately and combine at the desk. Roasting the chickpeas with a little cumin adds protein and a second layer of crunch.
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Gado-gado
Indonesia's great warm salad, and the most generous plate on the list. Blanched vegetables such as long beans, bean sprouts, cabbage and spinach go together with boiled potato, fried tofu, tempeh, hard-boiled egg and, traditionally, lontong rice cakes, all coated in a peanut sauce built from fried ground peanuts, palm sugar, chilli, tamarind and lime, with crunchy kerupuk crackers on the side.
It is also the easiest to make vegan: drop the egg and the shrimp paste in the sauce. Allow around forty-five minutes the first time, since several things need boiling or frying, but the sauce keeps well in the fridge and turns any leftover vegetables into dinner later in the week. Pack the sauce separately and it travels fine.
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Larb
The national dish of Laos and the most intensely flavoured salad here: minced chicken, pork or beef cooked briefly, then dressed with lime, fish sauce and chilli and tossed with mint, coriander, shallot and khao khua, glutinous rice dry-toasted until brown and ground to a coarse powder that gives a nutty crunch.
Served with sticky rice and lettuce or cabbage leaves for wrapping, it is a complete meal that takes about thirty minutes, and toasting the rice is the only unfamiliar step. It is best eaten warm or at room temperature on the day; the herbs blacken overnight, so for a packed lunch keep them aside and add them at the last minute.
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Thai Grilled Beef Salad (Yam Nuea Yang)
The steak salad for people who find most steak salads dull. Sirloin is grilled or seared, sliced thin and tossed while warm with onion, tomato, spring onion and coriander in a hot, sour and salty dressing of lime juice, fish sauce, garlic and chilli. It belongs to the yam family of Thai salads, and its dressing uses no oil at all, which shows how much flavour that leaves room for.
Served with jasmine or sticky rice, it is a full dinner in about thirty minutes, most of it resting the meat. The dressing is a few ingredients stirred together, so there is no excuse for a bottle. It packs reasonably well if the beef and vegetables stay apart from the dressing until lunch, though the beef is at its best freshly sliced.
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Bún thịt nướng
A Vietnamese noodle salad that eats like a full bowl of dinner: cool rice vermicelli under lettuce, mint, perilla and other herbs, pickled carrot and daikon, crushed peanuts and charred, marinated grilled pork, often with a fried spring roll on top. Nước chấm, the sweet, sour and salty fish sauce dressing, is poured over and everything is mixed together.
The hands-on work is under an hour, but the pork wants at least four hours in its marinade, ideally overnight, so plan a day ahead. That makes it a good weekend project whose leftovers pack brilliantly: noodles, herbs and pork in one box, dressing in a small jar. Grilled prawns or beef are common alternatives to the pork.
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Cold Soba Noodle Salad with Tofu and Edamame
The most practical salad here for a hot day or a packed lunch. Buckwheat soba is boiled for a few minutes, rinsed under cold water so it does not clump, then tossed with edamame, firm tofu, shredded cabbage, carrot and spring onion in a sesame, ginger and soy dressing, or a spicy peanut one for more richness.
Expect about twenty-five minutes, and the salad improves after half an hour in the fridge. Prepping further ahead works if noodles, vegetables and dressing are stored apart, since the noodles drink up dressing over time. Many soba noodles contain wheat flour alongside buckwheat, so anyone avoiding gluten should check the packet for 100 per cent buckwheat.
