A simple salad made with spinach, strawberries, toasted almonds, goat cheese all tossed with a fresh, homemade strawberry vinaigrette. This Spinach Strawberry Salad makes the perfect summer salad!

This recipe is inspired by a salad that I recently had at one of the local restaurants. It was fresh, tasty and made just the perfect summer salad. It was just a bit too sweet for my liking so I re-created a similar version at home but adapted it to my taste..

The salad has baby spinach, fresh strawberries, toasted almonds, cranberries, goat cheese and all tossed with strawberry vinaigrette. It’s super fresh and really easy to make.

I was not a fan of goat cheese when I first tasted it several years ago. But over the years, I have really warmed up to it especially in salads, on crostini, pizza etc.

Ingredients

You need a handful of ingredients to make this Spinach Strawberry Salad.

Baby Spinach: I buy this triple-washed packet of baby spinach from Costco and it works perfectly well for this salad. Regular spinach would work too. You can also use a mix of arugula and spinach.

Strawberries: fresh sweet strawberries work best here. You can definitely replace it with blueberries.

Sliced almonds: for this salad, I have used sliced toasted almonds here that I got from Trader Joe’s. You can replace it with any other nut of choice. Pecans, walnuts will work well, just toast them first before using.

Onion: it adds a nice crunch plus we love eating raw red onions! If you are not a fan, you can skip the onions.

Cranberries: dried cranberries add little sweetness and tartness to the salad. You can replace them with dried cherries or raisins.

Goat cheese: I absolutely love the combo of spinach with goat cheese. The creamy goat cheese pairs perfectly well here. You can also use feta cheese in place of goat cheese.

Strawberry vinaigrette: this simple vinaigrette is made with fresh strawberries, olive oil, rice wine vinegar, maple syrup, salt and pepper. Make sure the strawberries are sweet, if not you can increase the amount of maple syrup. Rice wine vinegar can be replaced with apple cider vinegar.

Step by Step Recipe

First, make the Strawberry vinaigrette. Chop the stem of the strawberries and then transfer them to a blender along with rest of the ingredients- olive oil, rice wine vinegar, maple syrup, salt and pepper. If the strawberries aren’t sweet enough, you can add more of the maple syrup. You can even add sugar if you like.

Blend until everything is well combined. Set this aside. This will make around 1 cup of vinaigrette.

1- To make the salad, add the spinach leaves to a big bowl. Add 4 to 5 tablespoons of the prepared vinaigrette. You may add more or less but you don’t want too much of the dressing (serve more on the side later) but enough to make the leaves moist. Mix well using a spoon and fork.

2- Then add the chopped strawberries, sliced onions, sliced almonds and cranberries.

3- Mix until everything is well combined and all components of the salad are coated with the dressing.

4- Top with fresh goat cheese and serve with more of the strawberry vinaigrette on the side.

Serving Suggestions

You can serve this salad as much or with a nice crusty bread.

Even a simple focaccia will go so well with this salad.

Tips & Notes

• You can use a mix of spinach and arugula here. You can use any mix of green here, I often use bag of “spring mix” that I get from Trader Joe’s.
• This spinach strawberry vinaigrette isn’t very sweet but you can always make it sweeter by adding more maple syrup. You can also add 1 to 2 teaspoons of sugar to make this sweeter.
• Do not add too much of the dressing, everything would be moist but not drenched with the dressing. Serve extra dressing on the side so that one can use as much dressing as they like while eating the salad.
• To make this spinach strawberry salad vegan, just skip the goat cheese.

More Salad Recipes

My Favorite Chickpea Salad

Mango Arugula Salad

Cheery Quinoa Chickpea Salad

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