Chopped Dinner Salad with Roasted Potatoes is the ultimate everything salad, and a simple weeknight meal! Hearty enough to be a stand alone dinner, starting with a bed of roasted potatoes, and piled high with salad greens, avocado, bacon, hard boiled eggs and any veggies you like! Change it up every time with tons of options for substitutions, it's the perfect versatile dinner!
Salad Night for Dinner
Every time I make this green salad with roasted potatoes, it turns out a little different. It's such a great weeknight meal to use up what you have, or pull together a dinner when you don't have much.
- The warm salad cold salad combination, from the hot-from-the-oven bacon and potatoes to the cold fresh veggies, is just so delicious!
- This is a perfect summer dinner when gardens and farmer's markets are in full swing! But, it's a great healthy winter meal too, light yet filling, and so versatile!
- A raw and roasted dinner salad is totally customizable to use what you like! All the ingredients are optional and interchangeable. Use bacon or add chicken, or leave it vegetarian.
- Clean out the fridge and use your pantry and freezer for a stunningly delicious meal that will give you so much variety in your monthly meal rotation!
If you love this salad for dinner, try my Grilled Peach Burrata Salad with Chicken or this Asparagus Salad with Crispy Prosciutto!
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Ingredients & Instructions
A Chopped Dinner Salad with Roasted Potatoes is a family favorite, loved by mom and dad, and the kids always find something to like too. If they are going through a picky phase, I give them the ingredients deconstructed into little piles on their plates!
I make it slightly different each time, but these are the main ingredient components that anchor the salad. Layer by layer, it's easy to put together!
Roasted Potatoes
Start by roasting a sheet pan of potatoes at 400° with olive oil, salt and pepper, about 40 minutes until crispy. They make the base layer of the dinner salad.
Get the potatoes started right away, while they are roasting you can prepare everything else. Any type of potatoes will work for this recipe!
Bacon
We love the bacon, it's the best part! But, you could keep this salad vegetarian if you like.
For perfect bacon, lay the strips on a separate sheet pan and cook in the oven with the potatoes, about 20 minutes. Flip it with tongs half way through and keep an eye on it toward the end.
Hard Boiled Eggs
It's easy to get perfect hard boiled eggs every time, with no black ring around the yolk!
- Place eggs in a pot covering them with cold water by about an inch. Bring to a boil over high heat. Right when they reach a boil, turn the heat off and cover. Let them sit in the hot water for 17 minutes, set a timer! Run under cold water, crack and peel.
Eggs can be done in advance and stored in the fridge, or make extra for great snacks or egg salad for lunch!
Salad Greens
Pile on the greens! Use any type of leaf lettuce or romaine, spinach, arugula, sliced cabbage, whatever you have!
Veggies
Any veggies you like will be great on this green salad with roasted potatoes. Avocado is a must and really gives this dinner substance!
Other veggies, like green beans or asparagus can be blanched in boiling salted water for about 3 minutes before adding.
Then add as many raw veggies as you like such as tomato, shredded carrot, cucumber, bell pepper, onions, radishes, scallions, broccoli, or pea pods.
Black Beans with Corn
To make this a filling dinner-worthy salad, it needs plenty of protein! Add a can of black beans to a strainer with some frozen corn, and run them both under warm water to thaw and rinse.
You could use any type of beans you like such as black, garbanzo, white or pinto. Extra bean and corn mixture can be frozen as is great to thaw for taco night. You probably won't use a whole can!
Cheese
Then pick a cheese! Try Parmesan, crumbled feta, blue cheese, or chopped cheddar.
The Dressing
This salad really works great with ANY homemade or store-bought dressing, but I usually lean toward vinaigrettes. You can try my Easy Vinaigrette in a Jar recipe, or make a quick warm/cold dressing using the fat from the bacon!
Yes, our grandparents generation would never waste bacon fat, they would save it in a jar and use it like we use olive oil. I store my strained bacon fat in a small jar in the door of my fridge and use it to fry eggs or saute veggies for soup.
For this dressing, add all the ingredients, including a tablespoon of warm bacon fat to a jar and shake it! You can also use olive oil if you aren't into the bacon fat idea!
Recipe Tips
- I like to freeze extra packages of bacon when I find them on sale so this meal is easy to make without much planning. I usually cook the whole package and freeze the extra.
- Leftover chopped bacon freezes well, and can be used again for this salad, or thrown in a pasta, soup like Potato Corn Chowder, or for Loaded Baked Potatoes. Great addition to omelettes too!
- Pantry Ingredients - You can usually find a few extras to add to this salad from your pantry such as jarred olives, roasted red bell peppers, artichokes, or sun-dried tomatoes.
- Versatile with the Seasons - In the fall you can substitute the potatoes for roasted sweet potatoes or butternut squash like in this Maple Butternut Fall Harvest Salad.
Recipe FAQs
This chopped dinner salad uses bacon, hard boiled eggs and black beans as it's protein. Substituting different proteins will give you lots of salad variations! You can add nuts or seeds like sunflower or flax seeds. In addition to the bacon and eggs, you could also add or substitute leftover Cast Iron Skillet Chicken, steak, crispy prosciutto, or Simple Roasted Salmon.
Yes you can keep this salad vegetarian but you'll want to add enough protein to make it substantial enough for dinner. You can add any kind of beans, hard boiled eggs, nuts, seeds, cooked quinoa or another grain. Avocado and cheese also make it extra filling.
This salad is great with a simple vinaigrette but also goes well with creamy dressings like ranch or blue cheese.
More Favorite Weeknight Dinners!
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Chopped Dinner Salad with Roasted Potatoes
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Print Pin RateIngredients
For the Salad
- 2 large potatoes (or 3-4 small) any kind
- 8 strips bacon
- 2 to 3 hard boiled eggs
- any greens, lettuce, arugula, or spinach
- 1 avocado chopped
- ¼ cup Parmesan cheese or sub feta, blue, or chopped cheddar
Optional Extra Veggies
- ½ cup black beans and corn
- ½ cup green beans or asparagus
- ½ cup tomato, cucumber, radish, bell pepper, onion, carrot, scallion chopped, sliced or shredded
For the Dressing
- 1 Tablespoon red wine vinegar
- 1 Tablespoon warm bacon fat (from cooking bacon, can sub olive oil)
- 1 teaspoon honey
- ½ teaspoon dijon mustard
- ¼ teaspoon kosher salt
- 6 grinds fresh black pepper
Instructions
- For the Potatoes - Preheat the oven to 400°. Roughly cut potatoes, no need to peel, into 1 inch cubes and toss on a sheet pan with olive oil, salt and pepper. Roast until golden brown and crispy, about 40 minutes.
- For the Bacon - Meanwhile, lay bacon on another sheet pan in a single layer. Cook in the oven with the potatoes until crispy, about 20 minutes, flip with tongs half way through. Drain bacon on a paper towel, then chop. Reserve 1 Tablespoon of the warm bacon fat to make the vinaigrette.
- For the Eggs - Place eggs in a pot covering them with cold water by about an inch. Bring to a boil over high heat. Right when they reach a boil, remove the pot from the heat and cover. Let them sit in the hot water for 17 minutes, set a timer! Run under cold water, crack and peel, and slice or chop.
- For the Black Beans and Corn - In a large strainer, add a can of black beans and any amount of frozen corn and run under water. This will rinse the beans and thaw the corn. Leftovers of the mixture can be frozen in a jar.
- For Green Beans or Asparagus - Bring a pot of water to a boil and add a good pinch of salt. Drop green beans or asparagus into the water for 2 to 3 minutes. Drain and let cool slightly.
- For the Dressing - Combine all dressing ingredients in a jar and shake well. You can use the bacon fat or substitute olive oil.
- Prepare all other ingredients while the potatoes cook, checking on and taking out the bacon as it is done.
- To assemble, place roasted potatoes on a platter. Top with greens, green beans and any raw veggies, bacon, eggs, avocado, and Parmesan (shaved with a vegetable peeler). Drizzle and toss with the warm bacon vinaigrette. Serve with crusty bread or croutons!
Notes
- Other great additions or substitutions - garbanzo beans, olives, cooked leftover chicken, pea pods, sunflower seeds, or really any veggies.
- This is a great chance to make extra eggs for your fridge for the week! Use them for egg salad, an easy salmon bagel dinner, or a quick breakfast to go!
- You can make the whole package or any amount of bacon, and freeze the extra cooked bacon. Great to add to a pasta dish, or into omelets.
- You can use any kind of homemade or store-bought salad dressing you like!
Jacki Jaeger says
I was hosting a large group of people and this was a HIT for dinner on a warm day! It was PERFECT and enjoyed by everyone. It looked so lovely on the center of the table. My guests were eager to dig in because it was such a beautiful dish to look at. Everyone loved this one. Great recipe!