A simple approach to amping up the nutrition in our cooking, Nutritious Delicious focuses on 50 everyday superfoods among vegetables and fruit, grains, and proteins, and uses them as the basis for building more nutrient-packed versions of the dishes we love for every meal of the day.
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Sarah from Making Thyme for Health Loves this Mayo-Free Broccoli Salad Recipe
A nutritious twist on a backyard-barbecue favorite.
By Published June 18, 2018.
A broccoli salad without mayo? Sarah from Making Thyme for Health was overjoyed when she saw that our recent superfoods cookbook, Nutritious Delicious, included a nutritious twist on this backyard-barbecue favorite.
“All you need is 10 ingredients to make this mayo-free broccoli salad that’s bursting with textures and flavors!” she wrote. “Mayo-haters rejoice!”
When we were developing this recipe, we found that the problem of broccoli salads—usually an alternative to potato salad—was in the heavy hand with mayonnaise and often sugar, yielding a dressing that overwhelms everything else. Our solution? Avocado.
“Instead of the typical heavy, mayonnaise-based dressing, this salad offers a more nutritious option by using creamy, heart-healthy avocado,” Sarah wrote. “Blended with fresh lemon juice and garlic, it makes for a smooth dressing that allows the flavor of the broccoli to shine through.”
Most recipes use raw broccoli, but we got a better texture and flavor by quickly steaming and then shocking it in ice water to lock in color and nutrients. Steaming also allowed us to cook the tougher broccoli stalks, leaving nothing to waste. To finish, we added toasted almonds for crunch and dried cranberries for brightness. Sarah approved of the recipe and the cookbook.
"I have to give credit to the ATK team for coming up with the brilliant idea to use avocado in place of mayo," Sarah wrote. Not only was that genius, but I loved the suggestion to chop up the broccoli stem and add it to the salad as well. Such a great way to prevent food waste. I’m telling ya, this book is full of gems!"
Nutritious Delicious
You don't have to choose between eating healthy and eating what you want. In Nutritious Delicious, America’s Test Kitchen digs deeper into how to use nature’s powerhouse ingredients to update the nutritional framework of our favorite dishes, rigorously testing recipes with an eye to getting great flavor while minimizing reliance on saturated fats, refined grains, and added sugar.Save 17% Now
What’s your favorite picnic side? Let us know in the comments! Find the recipe for Broccoli Salad with Almonds and Cranberries, on Sarah's blog. For more recipes from Nutritious Delicious, visit this site.
And for more information on healthy eating, check out these articles:
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