Summertime meals: Great dinner salads

Welcome to summer in the era of climate change. It's about a hundrety billion degrees out there in most parts of the country, and it's kind of killing everyone's appetite. I don't know about you, but I just can't bring myself to eat heavy meals when it's hot out. Not to mention the issue of making the kitchen hotter by cooking things. Blecch!

The solution is a good hearty salad. You may be raising your eyebrows skeptically at the thought of a "hearty salad," but believe me, these salads will fill your belly - and be crisp and cool, to boot.

1. Tuna, chicken, or salmon salad
You may not think of these as salads per se, but it's right there in the name. (I'm going to draw the line at potato and macaroni salad for this article, though. Delicious though they are!) The most common form of tuna salad is as a sandwich filling. But let's make this dish a little bit healthier by cutting the carbs and adding some veggies.

Take a can of tuna, chicken, or salmon. Mix it with "some" mayonnaise. (More or less, depending on your preference. My advice is to start small, since it's a lot easier to add more mayo than it is to take out the extra.) I also like to add a dollop of dill relish (not sweet). Serve it on a bed of mixed greens.

Image courtesy Flickr/jacqueline-w

2. Grilled chicken or steak salad
Take your regular everyday salad and add slices of grilled chicken or steak. (Quick tip for the lazy chef [like myself], you can buy pre-grilled strips of non-breaded chicken at the grocery store in the freezer section. Just thaw and toss them on your salad! Boom: done.)

A simple vinaigrette works really well with this. But if you want an extra hearty salad, pair chicken strips with Green Goddess dressing, or pair steak strips with bleu cheese dressing. Yum!

3. Three bean salad
This potluck staple is a filling and nutritious blend of fiber-heavy and protein-heavy beans. It's easy to make, and it keeps well in the fridge. This is one of the few salads that you can make ahead in a large batch on the weekend, and scoop out a serving to eat throughout the work week.

Image courtesy Flickr/John Spooner

4. Chef salad
Most restaurant chef salads are served over bland lettuce and made with "meh" ingredients. This is your chance to do it right. Instead of the traditional canned sliced black olives, add an upscale artisanal olives of your preference. (I like green olives stuffed with garlic spears, personally.) Instead of bland leftover deli ham, cube up some premium ham or sliced turkey breast. (This is another great use for those pre-cooked slices of chicken breast I mentioned above.)

5. Cold quinoa salad
Packed with protein and other nutrients, this Mediterranean style salad has a lot of flavor and heartiness. This version is made with feta cheese, olives, minced red onions, diced cucumber, and cherry tomatoes. Another great salad to make ahead and enjoy all week.

6. Cobb salad
Another restaurant standard, the Cobb salad is packed with chunks of avocado, bleu cheese, bacon, tomatoes, and diced chicken breast. (There's that diced chicken breast again! Sensing a trend?)

Image courtesy Flickr/Nemo's great uncle

7. Taco salad
If you can handle just a little bit of cooking, all you need to do is brown up some ground beef and a taco seasoning packet and you're golden, here. A taco salad has all the traditional taco ingredients - shredded cheese, salsa, sour cream, and so forth - but it's served on a bed of greens instead of in a taco shell.

This one stretches my initial definition a little bit, since it requires a bit of cooking, and it does have a warm component (the ground beef). But kids love assembling their own taco salads, and many otherwise non-salad-eaters will dig into a taco salad without hesitation.

You can use the pre-cooked ground beef cold (I've done it), but it's not nearly as appealing. The grease congeals and… at the very least, you will probably want to microwave the ground beef, let's just leave it at that.