This Cranberry Spinach Walnut Salad in Honey Mustard Vinaigrette is full of crunchy walnuts, sweet cranberries and fresh spinach, tossed in a quick honey and Dijon mustard vinaigrette. It is the perfect way to get these colorful super-foods into your diet!
This Cranberry Spinach Walnut Salad can be eaten as a prelude to the main dish, or as a healthy lunch during the busy work week. Or, even as a light dinner! It’s super easy to make, the hardest part is making sure your walnuts and spinach are fresh! Everything else is super easy.
This amazing salad is such a perfect winter treat, when we seem to overeat with all the holidays and parties and forget to eat all the fresh veggies that are out there too!
But now you have a salad that is not only healthy, but is still full of many flavors of the fall, yet is not too heavy or time consuming to make. Moreover, if you decide to make it for the holidays, it will not overload your Thanksgiving or Christmas table at all.
Frequently we eat salads where we mix whatever we have handy in the kitchen at the moment and then just add bottled salad dressing. We seem to forget how easy it is to mix a great dressing with ingredients that you already keep in your pantry.
With just a little bit of planning you can always have the right dressing sitting in your fridge ready to be used, that’s not only very tasty, but is very healthy with no unnecessary additives that store bought dressings come with.
Dijon mustard is such a great choice for many salad dressings. It’s tasty, creamy and easy to use. I seem to go through several jars of Dijon mustard in a span of only a couple of months. This Honey Mustard Vinaigrette is our “go to” dressing nowadays. It’s easy, healthy and never fails!
This Cranberry Spinach Walnut Salad is quick, easy and flavorful. So perfect for the winter!
You might also like these delicious and healthy salads:
Shredded Brussels Sprout Salad with Honey Mustard Vinaigrette
Olive Garden Copycat Salad
Honey Mustard Brussels Sprout Salad with Cranberries, Apples and Pecans
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This delicious Cranberry Walnut Spinach Salad in Honey Mustard Vinaigrette is loaded with fresh spinach, sweet dried cranberries and crunchy chopped walnuts.
- 5-7 oz bag/box (5 cups) baby spinach leaves
- 1/2 cup dried cranberries chopped
- 1/3 cup walnuts broken into pieces
- 2 tbsp red wine vinegar
- 2 tbsp Dijon mustard
- 1 tbsp honey
- 1/3 cup olive oil 5-6 tbsp
- ¼ tsp garlic powder
- ¼ tsp onion powder
- ¼ tsp sea salt
Arrange baby spinach leaves in the salad bowl (cut off ends if needed). Chop cranberries and add them to the bowl. Chop walnuts and add them to the bowl as well. Set aside
- Honey Mustard Vinaigrette: In a small bowl, first combine the vinegar and mustard, season with salt, garlic and onion powder. Now whisk in honey. Next slowly drizzle in the olive oil while whisking the ingredients together for about 1 minute. You will get thick creamy texture.
Add cranberries and walnuts to the bowl with spinach. Drizzle in the Honey Mustard Vinaigrette from step 2 and mix well.
If planning to take to a family dinner 2 hours away, would it be better to make the dressing on site, or can it travel already prepared, but not yet mixed with the greens?
Definitely prepare it ahead of time. Packing it with an ice pack while will do – the dressing has vinegar in it, which is an effective natural preservative a stalls food spoilage. It might be cold enough where you are to not even need an ice pack.
Made this for with 5 ounce spinach bag – turned out perfect!!!
Yes, 5 ounces is plenty for this!
Love spinach and honey mustard dressing combination!
Glad you liked it. Honey mustard dressing on salads is amazing.