Easy Apple Spinach Salad with an Apple Vinaigrette
on Oct 01, 2018, Updated Sep 14, 2024
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Quick and Easy Spinach Salad recipe has apples, pumpkin seeds, and a simple flavor-filled apple vinaigrette dressing to go with it. Spinach salad is a light but filling side dish that will pair wonderfully with a grilled meal.
Apple Spinach Salad is one of those quick, healthy, easy recipes that you can pretty much keep everything on hand for because it doesn’t have a whole lot of ingredients and it always tastes great. I love finding quick, easy, healthy side dishes like this because sometimes I get a roast in the slow cooker or some chicken legs in the oven and then I get tired of thinking about dinner.
You are going to love this apple vinaigrette! I tried a few different things to get an apple flavor into it and in the end, using apple juice concentrate made the best dressing with the most flavor. It’s just sweet enough (without being a sweet dressing really) and it’s packed with apple flavor. Add in some basic seasoning, apple cider vinegar, and a good quality olive oil and you have yourself one really easy but very impressive dressing.
Table of Contents
Why You’ll Love This Recipe
- Quick and Simple: This salad comes together in just 10 minutes, making it perfect for busy days.
- Nutrient-packed: It’s loaded with healthy ingredients like spinach, apples, and pepitas.
- Customizable: You can easily swap in your favorite nuts, seeds, or even add extras like feta or dried cranberries.
Ingredients
For the salad
- Baby Spinach
- Green Tart Apple
- Red Sweet Apple
- Pepitas, Candied Pecans, or other nuts
- Feta, Crumbled Cooked Bacon, Dried Cranberries, optional
For the vinaigrette
- Olive Oil
- Apple Cider Vinegar
- Apple Juice Concentrate
- Dijon Mustard
- Salt
- Garlic Powder, Black Pepper, Poppy Seeds, optional
See the recipe card below for full information on ingredients and quantities
Popular Substitutions and Variations
- Sunflower seeds, cashews, or candied pecans are great choices if you don’t have pepitas.
- If you don’t have fresh apples, use a different fruit like seasonal peaches, strawberries, pears (especially a firm variety) or whatever else you have on hand and like.
How to Make Easy Spinach Apple Salad with Apple Vinaigrette
Step #1. Place the spinach in a serving a bowl. Top with chopped apples and other toppings as desired.
Step #2. Place the dressing ingredients in a screw top jar, cover, and shake to combine. Place a few tablespoons in the salad and toss. Serve the remaining dressing on the side.
Recipe FAQs
No, you can use regular spinach but it’s a little more work. You’ll have to remove some of the large, tough stems and make sure that it’s been washed well, especially if it comes in a bundle instead of a bag.
Sure! I’d recommend a mild vinegar like red wine or rice wine over white vinegar or balsamic because those will change the flavor. But the beauty of making your own is that you can use whatever flavors or combinations you like!
Expert Tips
- Giving the spinach a rough chop makes it easier to eat for little mouths.
- Bagged baby spinach is one of my favorite greens because it’s pre-washed, tender, and easy to find. It makes it easier to throw the salad together quickly, too.
- You have tons of options for the nuts or seeds in this salad. I love pepitas but you could add silvered almonds, toasted, cashews, hempseed hearts, roasted sunflower seeds, etc.
- If you prep this salad ahead of time, toss the chopped apples in a little lemon juice so they don’t brown before you serve it.
More Salad Recipes to Consider
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Easy Apple Spinach Salad with an Apple Vinaigrette
Ingredients
For the Apple Salad
- 4-6 cups baby spinach
- 1 green tart apple
- 1 red sweet apple
- pepitas, candied pecans, or other nuts
- feta, crumbled cooked bacon, dried cranberries, optional
For the Apple Vinaigrette
- 1/2 cup olive oil
- 1/4 cup apple cider vinegar
- 4 tablespoons apple juice concentrate
- 1 teaspoon Dijion mustard
- 1 teaspoon salt
- sprinkle garlic powder, black pepper, 1 tablespoon poppy seeds, optional
Instructions
- To make the salad: place the spinach in the bottom of a serving dish.
- Chop the apples into bite-sized pieces and place on top of spinach.
- Add pepitas and other nuts as you like. Add optional ingredients.
- To make the dressing: Add all of the ingredients to a pint Mason jar, add the lid, and shake well to combine. Adjust to meet your taste.
- Add a few tablespoons of the dressing to the salad and toss to combine. Serve the salad with additional dressing on the side so that people can add more as they like during the meal.
Notes
- The beauty of this salad is that you can add a whole lot of things that you like or have on hand – it’ll be delicious. You can also just stick with salad, apples, and a few nuts or seeds and it’s still delicious. Make it your own or keep it simple, it’ll be good either way.
- Bagged, pre-washed spinach saves you a step and helps you get the salad together quickly.
- There are tons of options for nuts and seeds in this salad: pepitas, candied pecans, slivered almonds, roasted sunflower seeds, hemp hearts, and so on.
- If you don’t have apple cider vinegar, you can substitute another fruity, mild vinegar that you like.
This was an absolutely delicious salad. I added cooked, crumbled bacon, the apples, sliced almonds, feta, and dried cranberries. The dressing was WONDERFUL. I did add an extra 2 tablespoons of apple juice concentrate; the vinegar was a little too forward for me.
I have to say–fantastic recipe. I barely ever stick to any recipe I download, but this one was amazing. It had a unique, fresh flavor, and my husband said it was the best salad he’d had in over a month (in or out of the house). With all of the unique ingredients, it contained a superb mix of textures–crunchy, chewy, etc. I served it with roasted chicken drumsticks on the side. Thanks for rescuing me from my salad rut for the night!
SO good to hear from you! And I appreciate you taking the time to come back and leave a comment and a star review, always helpful!
My guess was cider. It is a scrumptious salad! I added grilled chicken for the meal. Thanks!
Yessssss! Add a little protein and call it a meal!