Strawberry Spinach Salad with Poppy Seed Dressing

Strawberry Spinach Salad with Poppy Seed Dressing is the perfect spring inspired salad. This is a great side dish for Easter, but it’s easy enough for lunch any day of the week.

The homemade poppy seed dressing is tangy and refreshing, and you can make it ahead and store it in the fridge for easy meal prep!

Strawberry Spinach Salad with Walnuts and Feta Cheese

This is one of my favorite salads, it’s so special:

• it has baby spinach
• sliced cucumber
• lots of strawberries, obviously
• some fresh herbs and chopped walnuts for pops of flavor
• and lashings of homemade lemon poppy seed salad dressing (do you even say lashings for dressing, or is that just for butter? I don’t know, but I don’t even care. Because this salad is too delicious.)

Ingredients you’ll need

Here is a visual overview of the ingredients in the recipe. Scroll down to the recipe at the bottom for quantities.

Ingredient notes

• Herbs: Use soft herbs in the salad – things like basil, mint and/or parsley taste absolutely delicious in this recipe.
• Walnuts: Feel free to leave these out if needed, or use different nuts if you don’t like walnuts. Pecans or almonds are very delicious, too. You can lightly toast them before using them in the salad for extra flavor.
• Dressing: I used my homemade lemon poppy seed salad dressing, but store-bought is just fine if you’re in a hurry. If you want to try making your own but aren’t sure – it’s very simple to put together. Just a case of measuring out some stuff and whisking it together. I’ve also made this salad with White Balsamic Vinaigrette before, and it’s also delicious.

How to make a Strawberry Spinach Salad

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1. Make the dressing
2. Chop the nuts
3. Slice the other salad ingredients
4. Add salad to bowl and pour over dressing
5. Serve right away!

Recipe tips

• I chop the walnuts first before I slice the rest of the ingredients, because I only want to use one chopping board. Slicing fruit and veggies makes the board damp, and damp walnuts get sticky and annoying when chopping them… So I always get them out of the way first.
• The strawberries I usually slice in a crazy disarray for salads. Some rounds, some half moons, some wedges… I find that keeps the salad really interesting.
• You can opt to cube the cucumber, but I find it prettier in slices. Plus, my kids love eating cucumber slices, so they pick these out of the salad and happily munch on them. Parenting win!
• Toss the salad as carefully as possible, because you don’t want to smash the strawberries.

Make ahead tips

If you want to prep this ahead of time, you’ll need to keep the ingredients separated before you’re ready to serve it:

• the dressing in a separate jar
• the baby spinach, cucumber, strawberries and onion in a covered salad bowl
• the feta in a separate sealed container (or just get a container of crumbled feta ate the store and keep it in there)
• and the chopped walnuts in a separate, airtight container.

Keep everything refrigerated in their separate containers until right before serving (the walnuts are fine on the counter if you prefer, everything else must go in the fridge). I do not recommend making this more than one day ahead.

Only combine/dress when you’re ready to eat. That way you can even bring this salad to picnics, potlucks or as a BBQ side, or use this recipe to meal prep your lunch.

PS If you try this recipe, please leave a review in the comment section – I appreciate your feedback! Follow along on Pinterest, Facebook or Instagram. Sign up for my email list, too!

Recipe first published on 04/01/2018. Updated with new photos, better text and slight improvements to the recipe on 05/27/2021.

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