We can’t get enough of our Seaweed Superfood Salad with Asparagus and Avocado. The salad is simple enough: just toss healthy greens in a homemade tangy ginger and wasabi dressing. After that, you can eat it just as it is — or garnish to your heart’s content for more crunch, health, and flavor. We add shaved asparagus, avocado, radish sprouts, sesame seeds, hemp seeds, and our delicious Crispy Shallots.
Seaweed is not just for sushi rolls
Toasted nori sheets are used in sushi-making. For a seaweed salad, use dehydrated sea veggies. Find them online, at Whole Foods or other grocery stores. Just take a handful of the seaweed from the pack and add cold water. In about 10 minutes you’ll have delicious reconstituted seaweed for your salad.
Aw Kelp Yeah!
You can always “have greens on hand”, even when your fridge is bare.
Raw kelp is fabulous to incorporate into your diet (and a superfood salad) — it’s rich in calcium, magnesium, iodine, and Vitamin B12). Feel twice as good, since you are fighting climate change with seaweed! Kelp requires no fertilizer or freshwater to flourish, it eliminates climate-warming CO2 from the atmosphere, and it counteracts ocean acidification.
Dress for Success
The Salad Dressing Recipe below gives the Superfood Salad tangy Asain flavors. It uses pickled ginger, wasabi paste, rice wine vinegar, soy sauce, and sesame oil. It’s so delicious: make a double-batch. Storebought dressings tend to have added sugar and other additives to make them shelf-stable. Your homemade dressing will be fresh and punchy, tailor-made to your tastebuds, and much, much healthier. Get out your blender and take 5 minutes to make your own dressing!
We recommend dressing the fresh greens and reconstituted seaweed liberally with the healthy salad dressing. Plate the salad greens and then add the garnishes of your choice on top. We’re adding blanched asparagus and creamy avocado slices. For color and crunch, how about a little sesame seed and hemp seeds? The crowning glory is a little splurge with our Crispy Shallots. Make these, or cheat with storebought.
Ingredients
Ginger-wasabi dressing
½ cup pickled ginger
a spoonful of wasabi paste (to your taste)
½ cup rice wine vinegar
¼ cup soy sauce
¼ cup sesame oil
½ cup grapeseed or other healthy neutral oil
juice of a lime (or lemon)For the salad:
1 large handful each of baby spinach and baby kale (or use other mixed greens of your choice)
1 bunch asparagus (12-18 spears), trimmed and blanched until just soft
1 cup dried sea greens, reconstituted in water
1 avocado, sliced
1 cup radish or broccoli sprouts
to garnish: black sesame seeds, hemp seeds, crispy shallots (you can purchase these at Asian markets, or make your own using our how-to recipe here.)Instructions
Make the salad dressing by adding the ginger, wasabi, vinegar, and soy sauce to a blender and whizz. Add the oils in a slow, steady stream with the motor running on low. Taste and adjust the seasoning. The squeeze of citrus should really take it over the top!
Liberally dress the spinach and kale with the dressing and mix well. Place on the serving plates and then add the sea greens, asparagus, and avocado on top. Garnish with the sprouts, and sprinkle with the seeds and crispy shallots.
