Kale Salad with Tahini Dressing

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This flavorful, crunchy Greek kale salad with tahini dressing is as delicious as it is hearty and healthy. Loaded with crisp romaine and kale, crunchy radishes, creamy feta cheese, and drizzled with a creamy tahini Caesar dressing, it is wonderfully tasty without being too heavy. Try it for lunch, as a side, or even as a satisfying vegetarian dinner!

Healthy fresh greens in a green bowl with radishes, chickpeas, feta, and wood tongs. A jar of dressing sits behind the bowl.

During the heat of summer, it can be a challenge to come up with ideas for no-cook meals. Of course, grilling and Blackstone griddle cooking are great options, because they keep the heat out of your kitchen. But not everyone enjoys outdoor cooking.

This is where a main dish salad like this one comes to the rescue! It’s delicious, healthy and light, but still filling, so it keeps even the big eaters satisfied.

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Why We Love This Recipe

Hearty enough to be a main dish.

This meal has the perfect blend of crispy romaine and kale greens, plus veggies and protein-packed chickpeas. The salad is sprinkled with feta cheese, and drizzled with a luscious and tangy tahini Caesar dressing.

It’s definitely hearty enough to enjoy for a lunch or dinner entrée, but it’s also a fabulous side with steaks on a Blackstone griddle or chicken, crock pot pork chops, or navy beans soup instant pot.

Easy to customize.

This Greek kale salad is easy to customize with whatever produce you have in your fridge. You’ll have a unique and delicious twist every time you make this.

We like to toss in roasted acorn squash or sweet potatoes in the fall and Blackstone vegetables in the summer. And, pomegranate seeds are fun to add year-round for a burst of tart and sweet goodness.

Our green goddess cobb salad is another delicious main dish salad. It’s dairy-free and gluten-free, too.

Ingredient Notes and Substitutions

Labeled ingredients image for kale salad.

For the base of the kale salad

Kale – This healthy green has a slight bitter flavor. Massaging helps reduce the bitterness (see our tips below), or you can use baby kale, which has a milder flavor.
Romaine lettuce – Because kale is soft and doesn’t have much crunch factor, we include romaine too. You can substitute it with any salad greens you enjoy. Iceberg and butter lettuce are good options.
Feta cheese – Feta is a popular ingredient in Mediterranean salads, but you can leave it out. Or, use a different variety of crumbled cheese. like Stilton.
Purple cabbage – The reddish-purple color adds a nice visual pop, but green cabbage would be fine.

Tahini Dressing Ingredients

Avocado oil – any mild-flavored cooking oil is fine.
Tahini paste

Tahini is made by grinding roasted sesame seeds into a paste. Good quality tahini paste has a subtly-sweet and nutty flavor, with a well-balanced hint of bitterness on the finish.

Although it has a similar taste to peanut butter, tahini is thinner in consistency than nut butter. Not only is it tasty, but two tablespoons of tahini provides 8 grams of protein. That makes it ideal as a salad dressing ingredient.

Lime and/or lemon juice – We like the sweet-tart combo of lemon and lime juice together. You can use one or the other.
Maple syrup – Honey is a great substitute

Labeled ingredients image for kale salad dressing.

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How to Massage Kale

Kale is often overlooked as a salad green because it can be a bit tough and chewy. This simple trick shows you how to soften the greens so they’re as tender as romaine lettuce. Massaging also eliminates some of the bitter flavor.

After chopping the leaves, add them to a bowl.

Using your clean hands as a scoop, pick up the kale and slide your hands in opposite directions to massage the leaves. This simple massaging action bruises the surface of the leaves.

Another benefit of this quick extra step is that the soft leaves will absorb the tahini dressing better.

Video – Massaging Kale Salad with Tahini Dressing

Watch this video to see how easy it is to massage the greens for your Greek salad:

🎯 TFN Pro Tip

Assembling Greek Kale Salad

If you’re preparing this ahead of time, it’s best to leave the salad unassembled until you’re ready to serve. You can prepare the veggies and other ingredients, but keep them in separate from the greens until it’s time to toss them with the dressing.

Making the Tahini Dressing

To make the salad dressing, you can use a small blender, an immersion blender, or even just a whisk.

Combine all ingredients, except for the water, and whisk or mix until well blended. Add the water and blend again to completely emulsify the dressing. The dressing should be creamy and pourable.

Toss the kale salad with tahini dressing just before serving.

Adding tahini salad dressing to Greek kale salad

Serving Suggestions

Serve your Greek salad with a sauteed chicken recipe, Cheesecake Factory recipe for chicken piccata, or smoked shrimp for a healthy, low-calorie, keto-friendly dinner. Or, it would be the ideal side for this penne al Salmone dinner.

If you’re serving it as a main dish, it’s great with slices of pita bread or old fashioned yeast rolls.

Recipe FAQs

What can I use in place of tahini? I can’t find it in my store.

Suitable substitutions for tahini paste are sunflower seed butter, almond or cashew butter, or peanut butter.

My tahini dressing is too thick. How can I thin it out?

For a nice tang, add more lemon or lime juice, or to keep the flavor the same, add 1-2 Tablespoons of water.

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This post, first published in May 2021, was updated with new content in April 2023.