Balsamic Berry Vinaigrette Winter Salad

Every holiday gathering needs a green salad and this Balsamic Berry Vinaigrette Winter Salad will be your new go-to. We dress up your favorite winter greens—in this case, baby spinach and romaine lettuce—with a sweet-tangy vinaigrette that gets berry sweetness from strawberry preserves, tang from balsamic vinegar and a hint of pungent sweetness from Dijon mustard. The antioxidant and holiday levels are brought to new heights by decorating this salad with apple slices, pomegranate seeds and toasted walnuts. Blue cheese adds a little funk to round out the flavors. Keep reading for our expert tips, including how to seed a pomegranate.

Tips from the EatingWell Test Kitchen

These are the key tips we learned while developing and testing this recipe in our Test Kitchen to make sure it works, tastes great and is good for you too! 

• To save time, consider buying prepackaged frozen pomegranate arils instead of cutting and de-seeding the fruit yourself.
• We use baby spinach and romaine lettuce for our recipe, but feel free to mix in other varieties of salad greens like arugula, radicchio, frisée, escarole or kale.
• You can swap out the walnuts for pecans, pine nuts or any nut you prefer. To toast nuts, spread them on a sheet pan (no need for oil) and place them in a 350°F oven for 6 to 8 minutes. This method allows them to cook evenly and reduces the risk of burning.
• This salad looks festive when assembled, but if you're unsure about which guests can eat what, you can set some toppings aside and let guests add them to their salads individually.
  

Nutrition Notes

• Winter greens, like baby spinach and romaine lettuce, create the foundation of this salad. Like most greens, they bring a variety of vitamins and minerals, including vitamins A and K, making them good for eye and bone health. The antioxidants in the spinach and romaine are known to specifically support eye health, so while you won't get x-ray vision, they will help protect the vision you have.
• Apples add crunch to this salad, along with some pretty powerful plant compounds—so powerful that researchers are looking for ways to include apple phytochemicals in health care products for disease prevention and treatment. You know what they say: "An apple a day..."
• Pomegranate seeds add to the fiber quota of this salad, along with the greens, apples and walnuts. They also pack an antioxidant punch and help reduce chronic inflammation, which means noshing on them regularly may reduce disease risk. If you don't want to seed the pomegranate yourself, many markets sell them by the cup or in the frozen fruit section.
• Balsamic vinegar adds a unique, almost woody flavor to the vinaigrette. It also adds to the antioxidant content of this salad. Surprised? Because balsamic vinegar is made from grape must, and grapes are loaded with antioxidants, some of them get passed on to the vinegar. So it actually has several potential health benefits, including lowering blood pressure and blood sugar.

How to Seed a Pomegranate

You can buy pomegranate seeds fresh or frozen, but it costs more than buying the whole fruit. We tested different methods for seeding pomegranates and found that our favorite method was to immerse the quartered fruit in a bowl of water while breaking it apart. When you gently separate the seeds from the outer skin and white pith, the seeds will sink to the bottom of the bowl—and the red berry juice is less likely to get all over your sink and countertop.