This traditional Nicoise salad is gentle, contemporary, and colourful, and the right dish to make simple spring or summer time lunches or brunch.

If I had to decide on one parlor trick recipe I like to drag out of my pocket for entertaining it’s making a platter salad the place everybody can serve themselves. Similar to my Final Italian Platter Salad, my Antipasto Salad Platter, and Greek Cobb Salad, this French-style Nicoise salad is ideal for ebook membership, child showers, wedding ceremony showers, girls who lunch, or anybody who loves brunch. That’s as a result of it’s gentle and wholesome, easy to place collectively or be prepped forward of serving, and makes for a help-yourself meal for everybody to dig into. It’s additionally a enjoyable, deconstructed method of consuming tuna salad.

Why You’ll Love It

• This Nicoise salad is made primarily with pantry staples
• It’s simple to organize and lends itself properly to meal prep (you possibly can hard-boil the eggs and potatoes, and make the dressing forward of time)
• It’s contemporary, wholesome, colourful, and makes for a fairly presentation on a platter (nice for entertaining!)

Nicoise Salad Substances

A traditional Nicoise salad is comprised of tuna, tomatoes, potatoes, hard-boiled eggs, inexperienced beans, olives, capers, and onion.

Right here’s what I put in my Nicoise salad:

• Canned tuna — for one of the best taste, use a high-quality tuna packed in olive oil for a pleasant, wealthy taste
• Laborious-boiled eggs — a traditional, primary ingredient in Nicoise salads
• Crimson onion — I want pink over white or yellow on this recipe for colour
• Capers — these pickled flower buds lend a briny pop to every chew (and tuna loves capers)
• Kalamata olives — these too add a pleasant briny chew
• Inexperienced beans — blanched for one of the best colour and texture
• Tomatoes — I like utilizing candy cherry tomatoes
• Child potatoes — creamy, white potatoes are greatest in a Nicoise salad
• Lemony Dijon French dressing dressing — for a contemporary, zippy taste that ties all of it collectively

Discover the whole recipe with measurements under.

Make Nicoise Salad

• Make the French dressing. Add all the substances to a jar fitted with a lid, shut tightly, shake properly, and put aside.
• Boil the potatoes and toss with among the French dressing. You’ll cook dinner the potatoes till fork-tender. Halve the potatoes whereas nonetheless heat and place them in a bowl. drizzle with 2-3 tablespoons of the French dressing dressing and put aside to chill.
• Blanch the inexperienced beans. Add the inexperienced beans to the pot of scorching water and simmer for 1 minute or till the inexperienced beans flip vibrant inexperienced. Drain and put aside to chill.
• Assemble your Nicoise salad. On a big platter, organize the tuna, potatoes, inexperienced beans, halved tomatoes, boiled eggs, olives, pink onion, capers, and hard-boiled eggs. Season with kosher salt and freshly floor black pepper and drizzle the salad with the French dressing or serve it on the aspect.

Recipe Substitutions and Variations

• Add child lettuce comparable to blended greens, bibb, and even endive should you’d like.
• Attempt smoked or grilled salmon as a substitute of tuna, or you may even use anchovies
• Use different forms of briny olives
• Sliced radishes can be a beautiful addition
• Attempt Nicoise salad with jammy eggs as a substitute of hard-boiled eggs
• As an alternative of white potatoes, strive utilizing pink or purple child potatoes
• High with contemporary parsley for extra colour and freshness, should you like

FAQ and Recipe Suggestions

• Why is it known as a Nicoise salad? Nicoise is French for a salad that originated within the coastal metropolis of Good, situated on the French Riviera. Nicoise is pronounced, “nee-swaaz.”
• Use a superb high quality tuna packed in olive oil. Oil-packed tuna lends extra taste to your salad. Skip the usual Starkist and select the next high quality tinned fish that flakes in large chunks. The standard makes an enormous distinction.
• Salt your potato water for extra flavorful potatoes. Salted water provides taste because the potatoes cook dinner. To keep away from pitting your pot, wait so as to add the salt till the water boils.
• Blanch the inexperienced beans within the reserved potato water. A fast dunk for 30 seconds within the scorching water takes away inexperienced bean’s uncooked taste.
• Costume the potatoes with among the dijon French dressing (I substitute the vinegar with lemon) whereas they’re heat. Sizzling potatoes take up the dressing, including one other layer of taste.

In case you make this recipe, please let me know! Depart a ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ score on this recipe under and depart a remark, take a photograph and tag me on Instagram with #foodiecrusheats.