Prepare yourself, because the recipe today is definitely the most popular salad at our household. This salad is so fresh yet very satisfying and filling because of the avocado. If you’re having a BBQ there isn’t a better salad to bring.

One thing to note about both the salad and the dressing recipe from below is that I didn’t put specific amounts but instead just the ingredients. This salad can feed as many people as you want depending how many people are coming to eat.

If you want to feed 4 people though I recommend using about 2 avocados, 2 corn cobs, maybe 10-12 cherry tomatoes, 1 orange bell pepper and 1/2 red onion. You can kind of scale the recipe from there but just make as much as you want of each thing really.

The Salad

1. The first thing you want to do is cut your orange bell pepper and red onion into about 1 cm squares and peel your corn cobs so they’re ready for the grill. Note that I only say orange bell pepper because we’re trying to get as much color as possible, but you can use any color without affecting the taste.
2. Brush your corn cobs and toss your pepper and onion pieces in canola oil. Grill the cobs on your BBQ and do the same with your pepper and onion pieces if you have a grill basket. If not then broil them in your oven until caramelized. You know the corn will be done when it’s caramelized all over.
3. Take your veggies off the grill and let cool a little bit. In the mean time halve some of your tomatoes and quarter others. Just get a few different shapes going on.
4. Cut the kernels off of your corn on the cob. As long as you have a good sharp knife this shouldn’t be hard, just run your knife along the corn cobs using a sawing motion and the kernels will come right off. If you’re really tricky put a small bowl upside down in a bigger bowl and cut the corn on top of the small bowl so that all the kernels fall down into the bigger bowl.
5. Cut your tortilla into small triangles or and broil the pieces so they become crispy.
6. Finally cut your avocado. You want to do this as close to serving as possible to avoid browning. However if you’re taking this salad somewhere, then toss the avocado with some lime juice which will kill the enzyme that reacts with the oxygen to cause browning.
7. Layer everything up into the salad. Start with a layer of cut up romaine lettuce, then add some corn, add the pepper and onion, top with the avocado and then tortilla chips. Finally you can finish with some micro greens if you have any as well as some feta if you’d like.

Drizzle your dressing all over the salad and enjoy. Speaking of the dressing…

The Dressing

Salad dressing are extremely easy once you learn some basics. First, for a pretty great salad dressing every time there’s a pretty fail-safe method:

• 1 part acid
• 1 part oil
• mustard to aid emulsion
• salt and pepper

As long as you follow that set of rules you can pretty much make any kind of salad dressing. In this case we’re going to use lime juice as the acid and garlic olive oil for the oil. This creates a nice Mexican-feeling dressing that pairs well with the salad. I recommend making the dressing in a mason jar because it’s easy to see ratios and then you can just shake it up in there after and keep it in the jar until you’ve used it all.

If you do make a mason jar sized portion of the dressing I would put in about a tablespoon of Dijon mustard. You don’t want too much because it will take over the dressing if you’re not careful but it really does help make a great emulsion between the lime juice and oil plus it creates a slightly creamier dressing which I like.

So in the end the recipe becomes:

1. Add 1 part lime juice, 3 parts garlic olive oil, some dijon mustard and salt and pepper to a mason jar
2. Shake until emulsified

I recommend serving this salad with my mole chicken and having an unauthentic but still delicious Mexican lunch or supper. You can see the two dishes together in the picture below: