Creamy Cashew Vegan Broccoli Salad

About this Recipe

Raw salads can be either the main and only course for a meal if you give yourself a substantial serving, or if you are eating with a meal, your salad portion should be served before the main course. Salads are loaded with enzymes which are necessary in the digestion of proteins and other foods. If you eat the salad first, they contribute to better digestion of the meal. Salads are very satisfying and when eaten first reacts on the system so you will have a smaller appetite for the cooked food that comes next.

Grandmother's Tips for Creamy Cashew Vegan Broccoli Salad:

1. Choose raw cashews, not roasted or salted. Be sure to soak overnight so they plump up.

2. The oil you choose will make a difference to the flavor. Grapeseed oil is one of our favorite oils for salad dressings because it has such a light clean taste to it. Grapeseed oil must be refrigerated after it is opened so it does not become rancid. Another of the reasons we like this oil is because it does not harden when refrigerated. It has a high smoke point, so is also good for stir-fry foods and there is no greasy after taste. Grapeseed oil is an abundant by-product of winemaking, make from pressing the seeds of various grapes.

3. Whenever you see salt in our recipes, although we don't type it out in full in recipes, we always use pink Himalayan salt. Sometimes we use sea salt, but pink Himalayan is such a pretty color and contains some minerals in small quantities that you don't find in regular salt. You will find differing opinions if one salt is better another, but we personally have made the decision to use the pink Himalayan salt in our kitchen because of the minerals and trace elements found and it is considered to be the cleanest salt available.

4. When making salads, we suggest only put dressing on the portion you plan to eat right away. Putting dressing on a whole bowl of salad and then leaving it in the refrigerator overnight makes the salad very soggy.

5. The recipe below makes 4 servings of dressing that are each 2 tablespoons in size and one single serving full meal portion of salad. The amount of the salad is exactly that shown in the photograph. Of course you can make more salad if you are serving more people but we wanted to make the recipe so you could get the full information on the nutritional and calories of one serving. Or you can serve smaller portions of salad, but for us this is our main dish so we like a nice size serving.


Ingredients

(Print)

Creamy Cashew Salad Dressing - Makes 8 tablespoons

3/4 cup raw cashews, soaked in water overnight

1/4 cup grapeseed oil

2 Tablespoons pure Maple Syrup

2 Tablespoon apple cider vinegar

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon pepper

Salad Making for ONE serving

2 large leafs of lettuce

1/2 cup raw broccoli chopped quite small

1/4 cup raw sunflower seeds

6 cherry sized tomatoes, cut in halves

8 green seedless grapes, cut in halves

1 teaspoon parsley, part chopped, part leafy for garnish

*Use 2 Tablespoons of the Creamy Cashew Dressing for One Serving

Directions

1. Soak the raw cashews in water overnight.

2. Drain the cashews. Add the grapeseed oil, maple syrup, apple cider vinegar, salt, pepper and cashews to the blender. The Magic Bullet Blender is a perfect size for making salad dressings if you have one. Blend until smooth then transfer to a container with a lid. Small canning jars work nicely.

3. Prepare all the vegetables, be sure they are all washed and dried.

4. Cut the broccoli into small pieces. Cut the tomatoes and grapes into halves. Chop the parsley.

5. Make the salad directly onto your serving dish. Start by tearing the lettuce leaves into bite sized portion with your fingertips. Place all the remaining ingredients on top.

6. Spoon 2 tablespoons of dressing onto each portion this size. Serve right away.

ENJOY!

Return to this Creamy Cashew Vegan Broccoli Salad recipe or check out more recipes at Grandmother's Kitchen

This information is for 2 tablespoons of the creamy cashew dressing per one salad portion as described above.

This information is for the salad above as a full meal for one person: So with the dressing that adds an additional 74 calories to the dish Total 527 calories

The flavor of this salad with the grapes is very delicious, but if you are wanting to avoid the sweetness and sugar from the grapes you can easily omit them from the recipe. Also because salads are mostly the food we eat, we included 1/4 cup of sunflower seeds for each serving, but they are filling and you can easily reduce the amount of sunflower seeds.

We used a Leaf lettuce. A leaf is an unheaded type of lettuce and has light green, loosely bunched leaves with ragged edges. It is a seasonal lettuce, although in North America, most grocery stores offer it as it is grown in green houses.

There is a big variety of cherry size tomatoes offered in the markets. We have noticed that they are packed with flavor, and often even in the winter, they have more of that tomato flavor we are craving than some of the large varieties of tomatoes. There is nothing like growing your own tomatoes and having a big juicy tomato plucked right off the vine. The aroma alone is one we long for during the winter months when we have to purchase the imported tomatoes. The Campari tomato that we are able to purchase year round seems to be one that promises more of that tomato flavor even in the off season.



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