Spring Salad (Easter Salad Idea or Mother’s Day)

This Spring salad is loaded with delicious seasonal ingredients including asparagus, snap peas, prosciutto and cheese. Topped with a deviled egg dressing, it’s perfect as an Easter salad or for Mother’s Day brunch.

Salads for specific holidays are becoming something of a theme around here. It all started with my Thanksgiving salad, which Google liked enough to put it at the top of it’s search results, meaning lots and lots of people make this salad each year for their holiday dinner, and that makes me so happy.

From there, I expanded into Thanksgiving fruit salad, which was also popular. And then I tried my hand at Christmas salad and Christmas fruit salad.

So, it makes sense that today I’m back with, you guessed it – Easter Salad (I did Easter fruit salad also, of course). Serve this with ham with pineapple sauce and mashed potatoes with heavy whipping cream with homemade gravy for my idea of a perfect Easter feast.

Although, just like all of my holiday salads, it certainly isn’t meant to ONLY be enjoyed on that specific holiday.

Like my fried goat cheese salad, think of this more like a Spring salad idea that you can enjoy any time you want this season. It’d also be right at home on a Mother’s Day brunch menu, alongside bacon in oven and vegetarian quiche.

What produce do I need for this Easter salad recipe?

• asparagus – you’ll need one bunch of fresh asparagus for this salad recipe for Easter. Trim the woody ends before you start. Balsamic asparagus is another one of my favorite ways to serve this Spring vegetable.
• parsley – about 1 cup of fresh parsley leaves will do it for this Spring salad recipe. Leftover parsley stems can be used to make the sauce and marinade for lamb lollipops for dinner.
• snap peas – you will need a half pound (8 ounces) of fresh sugar snap peas. I also love these served alongside salmon with my bourbon glaze recipe for salmon.
• shallot – one small shallot, which you’ll peel and cut into rings.
• hard boiled egg whites – you’ll use hard boiled egg yolks to make the deviled egg dressing, so might as well slice up the whites and put them in the salad, too! The eggs make this a perfect brunch salad.
• prosciutto – you will need 2 ounces of thinly sliced prosciutto, torn into bite-sizes pieces for this Easter salad recipe. Perhaps buy a little extra and make jarcuterie or an Easter charcuterie board as an appetizer, or prosciutto sandwiches for lunch this week?
• Pecorino Romano cheese – you can’t beat the sharp bite of this special cheese, although if you cannot find it, high quality shaved Parmesan cheese is a fine substitute. Either are amazing grated over mini Hasselback potatoes, too!
• lemon zest – some ribbons of fresh lemon zest add a nice brightness to this salad (lemon lovers, check out my lemon pancakes and lemon smoothie as well!).

How to blanch asparagus and snap peas for this Spring salad recipe:

For this Easter salad recipe, we will be blanching (quickly boiling) and shocking (cooling down in ice water) the asparagus and snap peas. This is easy to do! BHG has a nice video about blanching vegetables if you’d prefer visual cues.

First, bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Fill a large bowl with ice cubes and cold water and place that right next to the stove.

Drop the asparagus into the boiling water and cook until it’s bright green and JUST tender. Depending on the thickness of your stalks of asparagus, this may take anywhere from 1 to 3 minutes.

Use a paring knife to pierce the thickest part of the asparagus stalks to check for tenderness. When the asparagus is just tender, immediately transfer it to the bowl of ice water.

Repeat the same process with the snap peas. These should take about 2 minutes of cooking time until they’re tender. Transfer them to the bowl of ice water as well.

When I’m not making this salad recipe for Easter, I love blanched snap peas simply drizzled with miso dressing.

After all the vegetables are cool, you’ll remove them from the ice water and pat them dry with a clean kitchen towel before building your brunch salad.

What you’ll need for the deviled egg dressing for this Spring salad idea:

• hard-boiled egg yolks – the key ingredient that makes this dressing kind of taste like a deviled egg!
• red wine vinegar – this adds acid and brightness to the dressing. Feel free to substitute white wine vinegar instead.
• horseradish – the prepared kind, from a jar. Use up some more of the jar by making bloody marys, and don’t forget the everything bagel bloody mary salt and bloody mary skewers!
• Dijon mustard – this adds another little kick of subtle spiciness to the dressing for this Easter salad recipe (also love Dijon in the sauce for my corned beef egg rolls)!
• honey – adds sweetness and helps to emulsify the dressing. Leave the honey bear out on the counter and make some honey lemonade later in the week.
• sugar – also adds sweetness to help balance the bite of the horseradish and mustard. Make sure you have enough sugar on hand to make an orange bundt cake for dessert, too!
• paprika – what’s a deviled egg without a little bit of paprika sprinkled on top? I included it in the dressing for this salad recipe for Easter, too.
• salt and pepper – always.
• olive oil – choose a high quality oil since it will be the backbone of the dressing for this Spring salad idea.

Is the dressing spicy?

So, there are two things that add a little “kick” to the dressing for this Spring salad recipe – the horseradish and the Dijon mustard (which I also use to add a little kick to my maple Brussels sprouts).

However, the bite of those ingredients is balanced by the sweetness from the honey and sugar, and the acid of the vinegar.

So overall, I don’t think the dressing for this Easter salad idea is spicy to the point where your nose is going to run or anything like that. It’s creamy and tangy with just a little kick to it.

However, if you’re very averse to spice, you may want to omit or cut back on either the horseradish or the mustard in this deviled egg dressing. Or, you could use my citrus salad dressing for this Easter salad recipe, instead.

My favorite kitchen gadget for perfect hard boiled eggs for this Easter salad idea:

A little shout out to the Cuisinart egg cooker (not sponsored, but affiliate link).

I actually didn’t know egg cookers even existed until I took a food styling class a few years back, and the instructor recommended this cooker for perfect, easy-to-peel soft boiled eggs, like in my cottage cheese breakfast bowls.

I’m not much of a kitchen gadget person, but this appliance spoke to me, because I have NEVER had good luck with hard boiled eggs done the old fashioned way on the stove. I guess it’s just not one of my talents.

This little cooker doesn’t take up much space in my kitchen (I store it in a deep drawer with other small appliances when not in use), and it’s worth it’s weight in gold, whether I want just one soft boiled egg on top of my toast, four hard-boiled eggs for this salad recipe for Easter, or a half dozen or dozen for egg salad with pickles or Halloween deviled eggs.

It makes perfect hard boiled and soft boiled eggs for brunch salad and breakfast charcuterie boards EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. I cannot recommend it enough!

However, if you don’t have an egg cooker, you can simply use the water that is already boiling from blanching the veggies. After the veggies are done cooking, you can hard boil the eggs for this Spring salad recipe in the same water.

How can I prepare this salad recipe for Easter in advance?

I’m a BIG fan of prepping for Easter dinner in advance, so there’s less to do the day of. I even make dessert ahead of time by making lemon creme brulee, and I’ll make my vegetable lasagna recipe the day before, too. This Easter salad recipe is no exception to the rule. Here’s how I do it:

• The parsley can be washed and kept in the refrigerator up to 3 days in advance for this salad recipe for Easter.
• the eggs can be boiled and the dressing can be made up to 2 days in advance and kept in an airtight container in the fridge. Boil some extra eggs for a batch of shrimp deviled eggs!
• the asparagus and snap peas be blanched, ice bathed, patted dry and stored in the refrigerator in ziploc bags up to 1 day in advance.
• The cheese for this salad for Easter dinner can be shaved up to 1 day in advance and kept in the fridge.
• The shallot can be sliced up to 1 day in advance and kept in the fridge.

On the day of the big feast, simply assemble all of your ready-to-go ingredients for this Easter salad and serve!