Kale Salad with Roasted Sweet Potatoes

A super easy Fall salad packed with tons nutrition and flavor. It's hearty, it's healthy and it's great as a side or a main dish for a healthy dinner or lunch. Raw kale, roasted sweet potatoes, crunchy pecans, sweet cranberries and a bright apple cider vinaigrette are all ingredients of the season and combine wonderfully for a simple salad.

It's a good time to get on a semi-health kick before we start indulging in everything amazing in the coming season that, let's face it, will probably be the complete opposite of healthy.

As much as I love cooked kale, it might be even better in salads. One of the keys to a kale salad is to massage the dressing into the leaves, which softens them up. Another benefit of using kale over other lettuce is it will hold up the next day after it is dressed, so you can eat any leftovers for lunch.

Any type of kale is great in salads, but I chose to use Tuscan Kale for this one, which is also called lacinato kale, dinosaur or black kale. The leaves are flat and slightly more tender than the curly leaf kales.

If you want to add even more substance; some other great additions could be quinoa or farrow grain, apples or cheese.

Kale and Sweet Potato Salad

A raw kale salad with roasted sweet potatoes, pecans, cranberries and an apple cider vinaigrette is nutritious, delicious and both vegetarian and gluten-free. 

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Course: Salad

Cuisine: American

Prep Time: 5 minutes

Cook Time: 25 minutes

Total Time: 30 minutes

Servings: 4

Author: Justin McChesney-Wachs

Ingredients

• 1 Medium Sweet Potato , cut into ½" dice
• 1 bunch Tuscan Kale (also called lacinato or dinosaur kale)
• ¼ cup Pecans
• ¼ cup Dried Cranberries

Apple Cider Vinaigrette

• ⅛ cup Apple Cider Vinegar
• 1 Small Shallot , minced
• 1 teaspoon Honey
• ½ teaspoon Dijon Mustard
• Kosher salt & freshly ground pepper
• ¼ cup Extra Virgin Olive Oil

Instructions

• Preheat oven to 400 degrees. 
• Place the diced sweet potatoes on a parchment-lined baking sheet. Season with salt & pepper and drizzle with olive oil.
  
• Roast in the oven for 25 to 30 minutes, or until the sweet potatoes are tender.
• Meanwhile, make the vinaigrette by whisking all vinaigrette ingredients except for the olive oil in a medium bowl to combine. Then slowly drizzle the olive oil while continually whisking to emulsify. 
• Adjust the amount of vinegar and honey for your taste. 
• Remove the stems from the kale and hand tear the leaves into bite-size pieces. 
• Add the torn kale to the bowl with the vinaigrette and massage the dressing into the kale.
  
• Add the warm sweet potatoes, dried cranberries and the pecans to the bowl and mix to combine.