Fresh, light, and full of bold flavour, this Thai Salad is the ultimate way to glam up your dinner table. This salad is light and fresh, vibrant, colourful and refreshing with the most insanely good Thai Dressing! Coming together effortlessly, this salad is perfect for that backyard barbecue, potluck or summer dinner party.
Recipe Overview: Thai Salad
- ✅ Recipe Name: Thai Salad Recipe
- 🕐 Ready In: 20 minutes
- 🧑🧑🧒 Serves: 4-6 people
- 💕 Perfect For: Summer dinner party, barbecue, potluck, meal prep
- 🥣 Main Ingredients: Fresh vegetables, herbs and Thai dressing
- 📖 Flavor Profile: Vibrant, fresh, balanced
- 😊 Difficulty: Easy - great for beginners!
- 💡 Quick Tip: Add in some grilled chicken or steak to make it a full meal!
SUMMARIZE & SAVE THIS RECIPE ON
Absolutely nothing beats a fresh, light and beautifully balanced salad. From Grain Salads to my beautiful Lentil Halloumi Salad, a good salad will always have a place on my dinner table.
What I also love is a salad that has fresh flavours - Asian style salads in particular are my favourite. I've got a Cold Soba Noodle Salad that you absolutely must try! And my most epic Asian Noodle Salad is big enough to feed an army.
But when I’m craving something a little lighter, I always come back to this Thai Green Salad. It’s crisp, colourful, and incredibly fresh, loaded with vibrant vegetables and tossed in a punchy Thai dressing that truly makes the whole dish sing. It’s simple, flavour-packed, and the kind of salad you’ll find yourself making again and again.
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Why We Love this Recipe
- ✅ Bold Flavours - Big, bright and bold flavours that tantalise your tastebud and transport you to another place.
- ✅ Household Ingredients - you'll need some basic staple ingredients from the pantry for the Thai dressing for this recipe. The vegetables are the basics found in all supermarkets and fresh produce markets.
- ✅ Great for a Crowd - this salad will easily feed up to 6 people. It's great served on a platter at a barbecue or easily transportable for a potluck at a gathering.
☀️Need some Summer Hosting Inspiration? Try my Lamb Burgers for mains, and my Chili Chocolate Ice cream for a different and delicious dessert!
What Readers are Saying
🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟 This salad was wonderful...the dressing was superb I received so many compliments and requests for the recipe - Lo
Key Ingredients
Red Chilli - the correct chilli for this Thai dressing is a birds eye chilli. These are the longer, red chilis. They are mild in taste, however if you don't like spice, then do not add the child seeds.
Sugar - typically, palm sugar is used a lot in Thai cooking. Palm sugar is found in most Asian supermarkets. Palm sugar is less sweet than regular white sugar, and has a caramel-like flavour.
Substitutions
Red Chilli - Use green chilli (not the seeds) or red pepper flakes. The spice is subtle, so you don't need a lot.
Palm Sugar - palm sugar can be swapped with maple syrup, honey, coconut sugar, white sugar or brown sugar. Go leftover palm sugar? My Red Salmon Curry is a great way to use up leftovers!
Fish Sauce - there are now vegan 'fish sauce' options out there. Fish sauce can be omitted if you can't find the vegan version or have an allergy.
Thai Salad Step by Step Instructions
- Make the dressing by combining all the ingredients in a jar or small bowl and shaking/stirring well.
- Slice and julienne your onion, carrots, red pepper and cucumber.
- Place salad leaves on a large platter.
- Layer the onion, cucumber, carrot and red pepper onto the salad leaves.
- Add the dressing and toss.
- Top with the cilantro and crushed peanuts if using.
Expert Tip 👩🍳
The key to a great-tasting salad is finely slicing and chopping your vegetables. The carrot needs to be julienned, which is a technique whereby you cut the carrot into really thin strips. You can do this with a knife or a julienne peeler.
Thai Salad FAQs
Absolutely. In fact, this salad keeps really well. If I'm hosting, I would make part of the salad that morning. Wash the greens and herbs first and get them ready. Then I would pre-cut my onion, red pepper, carrot and cucumber. Store the veggies separately in an airtight container.
The salad dressing can also be made in advance. In fact, this is good as it allows the flavours to develop.
My Thai Green Salad pairs beautifully with scotch fillet or porterhouse steak. Additionally, a miso salmon or fried tofu would also be an amazing accompaniment to this salad.
Thai flavours are all about balance - sweet, salty, sour and spicy. Thai dressings typically contain the sweet element from sugar, the salty element from soy sauce and fish sauce, the sour element from lime and the spicy element from chilli. These flavours combined create the most perfectly balanced dressing. These flavours must be in harmony so it's essential to keep tasting the dressing until it feels balanced.
Thai Salads tend to be light, fresh and vibrant, containing really fresh vegetables, salad greens and a light dressing. The dressing brings the whole salad together with the unique Thai flavour.
Want More Asian-Inspired Recipes?
If you tried this Thai Salad or any other recipe on my blog, please leave a 🌟 star rating and a 📝 comment below to let me know how it went. I love hearing from you!
📖 Recipe
Thai Salad
Equipment
- 1 Jar for the dressing
- 1 Large Platter for serving
- Salad Servers
Ingredients
- 3 cups mixed salad green
- 1 Lebanese cucumber julienned
- ¼ red onion very finely sliced
- 1 red pepper finely sliced
- 1 carrot julienned
- ¼ cup cilantro roughly chopped
- 1 tablespoon peanuts roughly chopped, optional
Dressing
- ½ red chilli seeds removed finely diced
- 2 tbs soy sauce
- 2 teaspoon sugar
- 1 teaspoon fish sauce
- 1 teaspoon sesame oil
- 1 tablespoon lime juice
Instructions
- Make dressing by placing all ingredients in a jar and shaking. Adjust flavours according to taste.
- Slice onion, cucumber, carrot and red pepper very finely - julienne the carrot and cucumber.
- Place salad leaves in a large bowl
- Top with onion, cucumber, carrot and red pepper.
- Pour dressing over salad and lightly toss.
- Top salad with mint, coriander and top with peanuts if using.
Larissa Foster says
This was absolutely gorgeous - so fresh and simple!!
Georgie says
So glad you loved it Larissa! thanks for the feedback
Lo says
This salad was wonderful. I did not have a whole cucumber so I added some avocado. I followed the recipe and used the spring mix of greens. I loved the tenderness...rather than using cabbage as some others. The colors were beautiful. The peanuts on top were the perfect crunch. The DRESSING WAS SUPERB. i received many compliments and requests for the receipe.
Georgie says
thanks so much Lo so glad you enjoyed it!
Dienia B says
I had something like this at a Thai restaurant years ago and was happy to recreate it it for the Thai leg of my game at recipezazz
Georgie says
thank you for your kind review!
Lorna says
It's really amazing salad ,I also added some red cabbage and small pink radish and its goes more crunchy and yummy....thanks for this recipe
Georgie says
thanks Lorna for the feedback! it is a beauty isn't it!
Susy abraham says
It’s an amazing salad. My family throughly enjoyed. I used red cabbage as well which made it very crunchy.
Georgie says
Glad you liked it Susy - the cabbage sounds like a great addition!
Chef Mimi says
This is wonderful. The prettiness of the salad is what got my attention! And some salmon or grilled chicken would go so well on top, with that lovely dressing.
Georgie says
thank you! it's such a fresh salad, great with a thai style marinated steak!
Elena says
Loved this flavorful salad!
Georgie says
Glad you loved it Elena!
Toni says
I love everything about this salad! So refreshing and really easy to make!
Georgie says
Thanks Toni, isn't it just gorgeous!
Jenn says
This is an amazing salad! I just loved all the bright colors and fresh flavors! YUm!
Georgie says
thanks Jenn it's one of my favourites!
Marie-Charlotte Chatelain says
Loving the textures and colors in this one! This would go so well with grilled chicken or salmon!
Georgie says
it does indeed! one of my favourites!
Anita says
I love how light and colorful this salad is. And I really love the dressing. It's super easy to prepare and can definitely work with all kind of vegetables and salads.
Georgie says
thanks Anita, it's definitely easy to make and makes a beautiful meal with fish or chicken!
Agness of Run Agness Run says
This is the ultimate green salad recipe, Georgie! Is there any alternative to fish sauce?
Georgie says
Thanks Agness!!! It is great for a healthier salad! To be honest, I don't know if there is a fish sauce substitute. But as it's only 1 teaspoons it shouldn't make much of a difference if you leave it out. The fish sauce adds a salty element to the dressing, but as the dressing also contains soy sauce/tamari it should still have the saltiness it needs without the fish sauce 🙂
Lindsay | With Salt and Pepper says
These flavors are right up my alley Georgie!! I love that you reduced it for 2+...we often have the problem here of making too much in a short time. Love this!
Georgie says
Thanks Lindsay! These flavours are on point! Asian cooking is my absolute fav! With Adam and I just at home, it's so easy to waste food! My old food blog used to be just cooking for two, so some of my recipes still abide by that rule!
Andy Gibbs says
Great post. Reminds me of the salad i had in bangkok. The fish sauce makes it so uniquely Thai..I also once had the same dish with dried shrimp and an anchovie type fish and that was quite a weird taste. Knowing how the fish sauce itself smells so fishy I had to drizzle a lot of lime and pepper to cut the fishy taste.
Once again great post and thanks for bringing back some memories!
Georgie says
Thanks Andy 🙂 My husband has been to Vietnam and absolutely loved it. He saw the markets where they made fish sauce and said it was really interesting! Fish sauce can be quite over powering, that's why we are always constantly tasting our recipes, especially Thai. There is a delicate balance between salty, sweet, spicy and sour!
Kelsie | the itsy-bitsy kitchen says
I'm a total recipe hoarder too. Even if I already have 300 recipes for chocolate cake, when I find one more, I just have to copy it down. I'll never have time to try all of them! This salad sounds wonderful, and totally perfect for summer.
Georgie says
Ha ha recipe hoarding is the best! I am terrible to, and don't even have anywhere to put them all! this salad rocks for summer! I probably put too much chili in my last salad however! it can get super spicy!