Meow Recipes: Squash Salad with Kale and Roasted Garlic Dressing

This recipe is sponsored by ALDI

This stunning, fallish, kind of addicting salad goes out to all the people who love to make vegetables taste cozy.

Without fail, I always get asked to bring a salad or vegetable dish to Thanksgiving. And salads at Thanksgiving… well, you know how it is. You really need to make it count, otherwise might as well forget it. It’s hard to compete with mashed potatoes and turkey and all the other yummy regulars.

But this salad is not forgettable. It has all the elements of a winner.

I love this recipe because:

it’s vegan, so everyone at our table can eat it!
it’s delicious served cold like a salad or warm like a… warm salad.
it’s beautiful on a holiday table, and honestly also just beautiful in your lunchbox.
squash, chickpeas, kale, apples, pepitas, dried cherries and roasted garlic dressing JUST WORK TOGETHER.

I got my ingredients for this salad entirely at ALDI, with special shout outs going to the cute butternut squash, the huge bag of organic kale, and the crispy little pepitas and juicy bites of dried cherries.

I know a lot of you already know this, but ALDI is *the* place for holiday groceries. There are so many organic options (♡) and their prices are SO AFFORDABLE, which works really well when you’re trying to feed about 185 hungry people around the holidays. I love it.

You can click here for a one-stop Instacart grocery list, so all you have to do is schedule delivery and you’re good to go. While you’re there, be sure to use the code ALDIPOY to get $10 off your orders of $35 or more. That code works for first-time Instacart users, and you can use it not once, not twice, but three times!

Okay, here’s how we make this salad.

First: roast the squash, chickpeas and garlic (just wrap it in foil).

Then mash your garlic into a paste and whisk it into dressing.

Then… um, serve it up? Easy and beautiful is how we roll.

Roasted garlicky massaged kale, topped with the squash and chickpeas, and some pretty little apple fans, and dabbles of pepitas and dried cherries, and the final drizzling of roasted garlic dressing over the top. Yeah. Gorgeous.

Goat cheese, Parm, or bacon would be lovely additions, too, but maybe put that on the individual salad plates so our vegans can still be happy.

I really love it when real food is this beautiful, simple, wholesome and amazing on the taste buds.

Fall food is the best food.

Squash Salad with Kale and Roasted Garlic Dressing

Author: Lindsay
Prep Time: 20 minutes
Cook Time: 30 minutes
Total Time: 50 minutes
Yield: 6 as a side

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Ingredients

Salad:

1 butternut squash, peeled and cubed (about 3 cups)
1 can Dakota’s Pride Garbanzo Beans, rinsed and drained
a drizzle of oil
1 teaspoon kosher salt
2–3 cloves garlic
4–5 cups Simply Nature Organic Chopped Kale
1 honeycrisp apple, sliced
1/2 cup Southern Grove Pepitas
1/2 cup Southern Grove Dried Cherries

Dressing:

1/2 cup olive oil
juice of 1 lemon
1/2 teaspoon salt (more to taste)
black pepper to taste
1 tablespoon sugar

VERY IMPORTANT: Click here to get ALL of these ingredients delivered via Instacart! And if this is your first time, don’t forget to use the ALDIPOY code for $10 off your order of $35 or more.

Instructions

Roast: Preheat the oven to 425 degrees. Place squash and chickpeas on a sheet pan. Drizzle with oil, sprinkle with salt. Place garlic cloves in the center of a small piece of foil. Drizzle with oil and fold it up into a little packet. Place the packet on the sheet pan. Roast everything for 30-40 minutes.
Dressing: Whisk the oil, lemon juice, salt, pepper, and sugar together. When the sheet pan comes out of the oven, mash up the roasted garlic and add it to the dressing.
Kale: In a large bowl, drizzle the kale with a little bit of dressing (hello, flavor!). Massage it – as in, just, like, squeeze it – until it’s deep green and the texture has relaxed a little bit. This just makes it more tender and pleasant to eat.
Salad: Place kale in a large salad bowl. Top with squash and chickpeas. Arrange little fanned-out apple slices on the salad (pretty!). Dot the whole thing with pepitas and dried cherries, and finish with the rest of the dressing. Serve warm or cold! IT’S A BEAUTIFUL MASTERPIECE.

Notes

Make ahead: You could definitely roast the squash, garlic, and chickpeas a day in advance. That being said, the texture of the roasted chickpeas will change from crispy to… less crispy after they’ve been roasted and cooled. I don’t think they taste bad that way! Just different.

Category: Salad
Method: Bake
Cuisine: American