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!
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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.
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