Salads of course are not from Spain, but we do have some delicious Spanish salads. Most of them are really easy to make, but we have a huge variety and these are very different.
What is a Spanish salad?
As we said there is a huge variety of Spanish salads and of course, each of them is totally different, so…What is a Spanish salad?? Well, one thing almost every Spanish salad have in common is that all of them are rich in fruit and vegetables, plus it´s hard to find one kind that has no less than 4 or 5 ingredients.
Homemade Spanish salad
The recipe for the homemade Spanish salad is basically a mix of tomatoes, lettuce, extra virgin olive oil and salt. Other than that, some additional ingredients to this homemade salad dressing are the vinegar, olives, onion or tuna.
Generally, the traditional Spanish salad they would serve you in a restaurant would include all these ingredients. It´s delicious!!
Famous Spanish salads
Of all the salads in Spain, there are many kinds that are not popular at all. For example, you probably never find anyone eating the orange Spanish salad, the Spanish egg salad or the eggplant salad…we promise you that all of them exist!
But there are some others, that are known for being the “Famous Spanish salads” and these are not famous just in Spain, they are recognize everywhere in the world. The mixed green salad (ensalada mixta), the Russian Spanish salad, or the macaroni salad are very popular and very common in the Spanish cuisine.
Fresh Summer Spanish salad
In Spain is very common to eat salad during the summer months. The reason is because there are many types of vegetables and many of these keep us fresh during the hot months of the year. As you can imagine most of these summer salads always include fruits on their recipes as its what gives them a fresh style.
Some typical summer Spanish salads are the Macedonia fruit salad, which is a mixture of different fruits. The ensaladilla Rusa (Russian Spanish salad), which is like a potato salad with a lot of mayonnaise. And last of all, the seafood salad, generally with anchovy.
Spanish tapas salad
It´s important to know how to eat salad in Spain. Generally, Spanish people would eat salad as a first dish and then maybe some fish or meat as the second plate. Rarely, you can sometimes find people who eat salad as a main dish, but they probably end up starving after that.
What you can find many times is people eating salad as a tapa. It doesn´t happen always, but many people would ask for a salad in a restaurant as a tapa to share with family or friends and they would start eating their lunch after that. It happens very often with paella at the beach, almost everyone just asks for an “Ensalada Mixta” and then they eat the paella as a main dish.
Enjoy the salads!
