Broccoli salad
A lighter broccoli salad: florets blanched for just sixty seconds, so they keep their crunch, in a yogurt and lemon dressing with almonds.
- 150
- kcal
- 5g
- protein
- 10g
- fat
- 13g
- carbs
- Prep
- 15 min
- Cook
- 2 min
- Serves
- 4
Photograph by Amar Preciado on Pexels
Ingredients
- 1 head broccoli, cut into small florets
- 1/3 cup toasted almonds, chopped
- 1/4 red onion, sliced paper thin
- 2 tbsp raisins
- 3 tbsp yogurt
- 1 tbsp olive oil
- 1 tbsp lemon juice
- Salt and black pepper
Method
-
1
Blanch the broccoli
Blanch the florets for 60 seconds in boiling salted water, then into ice water. Drain thoroughly.
-
2
Make the dressing
Whisk the yogurt, oil and lemon juice.
-
3
Toss and rest
Toss everything together, season with salt and pepper, and leave 15 minutes before eating.
The sixty-second blanch
Raw broccoli in a salad is aggressive: squeaky, bitter, and hard work to chew. Cooked broccoli in a salad is limp. Sixty seconds in boiling salted water followed immediately by ice water sits exactly between the two — it sets the color bright green, softens the texture just enough, and knocks the raw edge off the flavor without touching the crunch.
The ice water is not optional. Residual heat keeps cooking the florets for several minutes after draining, and that is enough to take them past the point you were aiming for.
Slicing the onion thin enough
Red onion in a salad is either a background note or the entire experience, and the difference is thickness. Paper-thin slices, ideally on a mandoline, distribute through the salad. Thick slices are things you bite into. If raw onion is still too assertive, soak the slices in cold water for ten minutes and pat dry — it removes much of the sulfur bite.
The yogurt dressing, and why not mayonnaise
The classic American broccoli salad is bound with mayonnaise and sugar and comes in around 350 kcal a serving. This version uses yogurt with olive oil and lemon and lands at 150, with the raisins supplying the sweetness the sugar was providing. The trade is a sharper, lighter salad — genuinely different rather than a diminished copy.
Keeping it
Best within a day. The blanched broccoli holds up well but the almonds soften once dressed, so if you are making it ahead, keep them separate and add on serving.
What it is worth nutritionally
Broccoli's vitamin C is water-soluble and heat-sensitive, so the brief blanch preserves considerably more of it than boiling would. The almonds bring vitamin E and monounsaturated fat, and they are most of the 10 g of fat here — see healthy fats for why that is a reasonable place for the fat to come from.
