Festive Apple Pear Salad

This flexible salad recipe can truly be tweaked to be your own but the classic base ingredients include:

• Romaine Lettuce: Crispy, crunchy, and full of flavor.
• Red Apples
• Green Pears
• Shredded Parmesan
• Toasted Almonds
• Dried Cranberries
• Mustard Vinaigrette: You could use store bought prepared dressing or make my easy homemade mustard vinaigrette.

Don't miss the list of easy variations at the bottom of the post.

Keep the Fruit Crisp

Most holiday salads tend to sit out on a buffet table for a while during the meal.

In order to keep your fresh apples and pears crisp and presentable, you'll want to dice them and toss them in a bit of fresh lemon juice before adding them to your salad.

This will prevent them from turning brown in the air as they sit and keep them deliciously crispy.

Build the Salad

To build the salad, lay a bed of prepared romaine lettuce on your serving platter.

Sprinkle the prepared apple and pear over the top.

Scatter the parmesan cheese, cranberries, and almonds over the top and you're ready to serve with the dressing on the side.

If you prefer to serve your holiday salad already tossed in salad dressing, you could add all the ingredients to a large salad bowl and toss it yourself before serving.

I generally prefer to serve the dressing separately so my guests can add as much or as little salad dressing as they prefer to their own plates.

Serving Suggestions

This apple pear salad would make such a wonderful complement to an easy holiday dinner that included:

• Main Dish: I love my roasted pork in applesauce or the cranberry blue cheese pork tenderloin recipes. Both of the pork recipes have ingredients that cross over well with this salad.
• Side Dish: Serve the pork with creamy mashed potatoes or crispy cornflake potatoes for a rich side dish. The salad will be a lovely fresh addition to that menu!
• Chicken Salad Base: This festive salad would taste amazing as the base for my cranberry chicken salad. You may wish to omit the cranberries in this salad recipe since there are plenty of them with the chicken.

Variations

If you want to tweak this salad, there are several easy swaps you could make to the main list of ingredients:

Lettuce: If you prefer, you could use spinach, arugula, or iceberg lettuce.

Cheese: You could substitute feta or blue cheese crumbles for the shredded parmesan.

Fruit: You could substitute a green apple for the pear or add mandarin oranges. You could also add some dried apple slices for crunch and to boost the apple flavor.

Nuts: You could substitute chopped pecans or walnuts or skip the nuts altogether for a nut-free salad. You could also make a batch of these easy peppered glazed pecans for a bit more kick.

Dressing: You could use a lemon parmesan vinaigrette or a raspberry vinaigrette if you prefer.

Main Dish Salad Variation

If you want to serve this as your main dinner dish, you could easily top this salad with some protein for extra staying power.

Chop up a batch of seasoned chicken tenderloins, roast shrimp served warm or cold, mustard glazed salmon, or even slices of pork tenderloin would all pair well with this for an entree salad recipe.

Make Ahead Tips

You can prep this salad up to 24 hours in advance for a holiday meal.

Simply wash and chop the lettuce. Store it in an airtight container separate from the other ingredients.

You could chop the pear and apple, toss them in lemon juice, and keep them in an airtight container in the fridge.

Toast the almonds in advance and just keep them in an airtight container at room temperature.

Then build the salad just before serving.