Feast on all the colors of the rainbow!
Our rainbow salad with sauteed veggies and boiled potatoes is full of crunch and well-seasoned ingredients. Eating all the colors of the rainbow ensures we get a nutrient dense meal, packed with nearly all the vitamins and minerals our body needs for the day. Because every vegetable (and fruit) offers a specific nutrient profile, consuming all the colors on a regular basis will help keep your body healthy. Looking at nature’s catalogue, it’s super cool that each colorful superfood addresses our bodily needs in a specific way.
Eat The Rainbow
Red and purple fruits and vegetables contain lycopene and anthocyanin. Lycopene helps support eye health and anthocyanins are full of antioxidants. For our superfood salad, we chose radishes and beets.
Orange and yellow vegetables contain beta carotene which transforms into Vitamin A. Again, great for vision and full of antioxidants. Our rainbow salad contains carrots and cooked yellow bell peppers.
Finally, green vegetables contain lutein and indoles, which are high in antioxidants. Cruciferous vegetables like broccoli, bok-choy, and cauliflower also fall into this category. Greens help reduce risk of obesity, cancer, heart disease, high blood pressure and mental decline. We chose both lettuce and cabbage for this recipe. Cucumber is actually a fruit, but we chose to add it to this superfood salad for it’s taste, texture, and color.
Boiled Potatoes Satisfy Hunger
We threw in a boiled potato for good measure because cooked potatoes balance out the cold crunch of this rainbow salad. Boiled potatoes are one of the most nutrient dense foods on the planet. In addition to being one of the top filling foods out there, they contain nearly every nutrient you need. If you can find purple baby potatoes, use those beauties!
By sautéing both the cabbage and the bell pepper, we not only softened the taste of both vegetables, but we also added more of a smooth, warm texture that complements the rest of the roughage.
Steamed beets can now be purchased in the produce aisle and we cannot recommend them enough. Not only are they high in iron and full of free radical fighting antioxidants, but cooked beets offer an amazing softness of texture and flavor to round out all the competing crunchiness of the other ingredients. Thinly slice them into matchstick size for better presentation. By laying a piece of parchment paper on your cutting board, you can eliminate unwanted staining.
Superfood Salads Still Need Fat
We need a little fat to fuel ourselves, and there’s nothing tastier than some toasted nuts. We chose pepitas, or hulled pumpkin seeds, because they add another level of texture and crunch. Plus, they’re affordable! A little good fat goes a long way in fueling your day, so add it in the form of nuts, avocado, or cheese. As a meal, salads consisting only of raw vegetables won’t fill us up and typically leave us wanting more. There’s a fine balance of protein, fat, and carbs in a well-rounded meal, and adding pepitas to this salad strikes a perfect balance.
Assemble this Beautiful Rainbow Salad
We’ve seen these salads with the colors intermixed or assembled in sections on top of the greens. Both preparations are beautiful to look at, but separately arranging the ingredients by color is stunning. Different cuts such as julienning, dicing, and grating also provide great texture and eye appeal. Consider this rainbow salad with cooked vegetables recipe as more of a jumping ground and play with your vegetables and fruit according to season. Adding a whole grain and/or protein also amps up the flavor of this superfood salad, so go boldly into your salad bowl and let us know what you come up with. Any and all salad dressings work here, and we’ve added links to our favorites after the recipe.
Rainbow Salad With Sautéed Veggies and Boiled Potatoes
Ingredients
Salad
- 1 cup potatoes baby, purple
- 1 teaspoon olive oil
- 1 tablespoon parsley fresh, minced
- 1 pinch salt
- 1 pinch pepper
- 1 tablespoon olive oil
- 1 cup red cabbage shredded
- 1 cup yellow bell pepper cut in slivers, then halved
- 2 cups red leaf lettuce cut or torn
- 1 cup beet peeled and cooked, diced
- 1/2 cup radishes thinly sliced
- 1 cup carrot peeled and diced
- 1 cup cucumber diced and cubed
- 2 tablespoons pumpkin seeds toasted
Instructions
- In a small pot of boiling water, cook little potatoes 12-15 minutes until tender. Toss together with olive oil, parsley, salt and pepper.
- Heat olive oil in a large skillet over high heat; cook and stir cabbage and yellow bell pepper in the hot oil, stirring every 30 seconds, until tender, 5 to 7 minutes. Put aside on a plate. Saute them separately if you want to present your salad by color.
- In two separate bowls, lay down one cup of red leaf lettuce, followed by 1/2 cup beet, 1/4 cup radishes radishes, 1/2 cup each sautéed cabbage and bell pepper, 1/2 cup carrot, 1/2 cup cucumber, 1 tablespoon pumpkin seed, and 1/2 cup potatoes. You can mix each salad with 1-2 tablespoons of your choice of salad dressing or just drizzle the dressing on top.
Notes
Nutrition Information
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If you love plant-based recipes, we think you may also want to try our Plant-Based Ranch Dressing Recipe or any of these 6 Plant-Based, Oil-Free Salad Dressing Recipes!
Please let us know what you thought of this yummy Rainbow Salad with Sauteed Veggies and Boiled Potatoes in the comment section below!
This sounds good, but I’m confused. 1 cup red cabbage is listed twice. Do you cook some and leave some raw, or is it a typo?
Yes it was a typo. Just removed the 2nd cup. 🙂