Fall Harvest Salad

A bowl of harvest salad with the different toppings in groups on top of the kale.

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This Harvest Salad made with roasted chickpeas and sweet potatoes, crisp apples, crunchy pumpkin seeds, and kale blends all your favorite seasonal fall flavors in one dish. Add it to any meal this season, enjoy it as a Thanksgiving side dish, or add some chicken for a tasty main dish.

Course Salad

Cuisine American

Servings

Calories 517kcal

Author Caitlin Self, MS, CNS, LDN

Ingredients

2 ½ cups cooked chickpeas about 1 and a half cans, or can be cooked from dry
1 medium sweet potato about 1 pound
1 Tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
½ teaspoon fine salt
½ teaspoon black pepper
½ teaspoon red pepper flakes
14 ounces kale chopped (about 8 cups packed) 400 g
1 medium apple gala, fuji, or honey crisp, thinly sliced or cut into mini matchsticks
2 ounces feta cheese crumbled
¼ cup Toasted Pumpkin Seeds
¼ cup Pickled Red Onions
1 recipe Whole Grain Mustard Balsamic Dressing more to taste

Instructions

Preheat oven to 400ºF. Slice the sweet potatoes into half moons, and drain and rinse the chickpeas (if using canned). Place the sweet potatoes and chickpeas on a lined sheet pan and toss with the olive oil and seasonings. Bake on 400ºF for about 25 minutes, stirring halfway through cooking.
Wash the kale and remove the stems, then finely chop. You can do this by stacking the leaves and rolling them, then slicing thinly. Once you have thin slices, you can chop the kale in the opposite direction to get smaller pieces. Add to a large bowl with about half of the salad dressing and massage thoroughly with your hands for about 60 seconds.
Meanwhile, prepare the toppings - slice the apple and crumble the feta, make the toasted pumpkin seeds, pickled red onions, and mustard dressing.
To serve, add the kale to a salad bowl and decoratively top with all of the ingredients - the sweet potatoes and chickpeas, the sliced apple, the feta cheese, the pumpkin seeds, the pickled red onions, and the crumbled feta cheese. Drizzle with additional dressing and serve.
To serve, you can divide the greens and ingredients among the serving bowls, or you can place the entire salad all in one large bowl. Feel free to toss together before serving into bowls.

Notes

Store: You can store leftovers in the refrigerator for up to one day but once you massage the kale it will continue to soften the longer it sits. If you are making this ahead of time or know you will have leftovers, only massage the kale you are using and store all the ingredients separately.

Slicing the apples: I do prefer to slice the apples into mini matchsticks but they do tend to brown more quickly because they have a lot of surface area for oxygenation. if you’re making this ahead or you want it to look more attractive you may want to cut the apples right before serving or cover them in water with lemon juice to slow down the browning.

Serving: Serve it up in a large decorative salad bowl for special occasions or when serving a crowd! For single servings, you can easily assemble the salad in individual bowls instead.

Nutrition