Author: Thomas Sixt is a chef, food photographer, cookbook author and blogger. Here he shares recipes, answers cooking questions and helps with cooking.
I would like to start with the dressing for the radicchio salad :
The lettuce is bitter in taste and therefore tolerates a sweet dressing with brown cane sugar , honey or stevia .
My basic dressing is white vinegar , mustard , salt , sugar and pepper , and oil .
When it comes to mustard, Dijon mustard is the first choice, medium-hot mustard is OK, but doesn’t taste all that exciting.
3.1 Order of Ingredients, Important when Preparing the Dressing!
Pour the vinegar into a mug or bowl.
Add mustard, salt, pepper and sugar and stir.
The spices and mustard will dissolve in the vinegar as you stir.
This is how a good dressing is made because the ingredients first dissolve in the vinegar.
Now the oil is missing for the salad, please stir it in slowly.
Here I am going to explain two variants of marinating salads to you today, interesting because the basic tips for marinating salads come across so vividly:
radicchio salad close up with beautiful blurs
3.2 Marinate the Radicchio Salad – the Grandma Variant
My grandmother didn’t have a salad spinner.
The lettuce was plucked into small pieces, washed clean several times in cold water, then placed on a colander.
With this variant, some water remains on the lettuce. If you were to use a dressing made with oil for marinating, the dressing would hardly stick to the lettuce leaves.
This is due to the surface tension of the water. If you don’t want to or can’t spin your lettuce dry, let the lettuce leaves drain well and marinate with a vinegar stand:
Vinegar, mustard, sugar, salt and pepper, when the leaves are well marinated add the oil and mix well.
Spin the radicchio lettuce dry
3.3 Marinate Radicchio, the Professional Chef Variant
Professional chefs pluck the lettuce and quickly wash it in cold water.
The lettuce can then be used on a carousel in the salad spinner so that it dries well.
Dry lettuce goes well with a ready-made salad dressing made from vinegar, salt, pepper, mustard, sugar and oil.
This is because only the dry lettuce leaves will accept the salad dressing with oil.
I’ll show you how to wash lettuce elsewhere, be careful with lamb’s lettuce, it needs special treatment, and I’ll show how to wash lamb’s lettuce in a second article.
Marinate spinach salad with vegetables.
4. Tip for Preparing Radicchio Salad with Oranges
A very popular combination consists of radicchio salad and oranges. You can peel the oranges and cut them into small pieces or prepare really great orange fillets, I have a video for you about that:
4.1 Video Peeling Oranges for Filleting
4.2 Video Filleting Peeled Oranges
Today I combine the radicchio salad with diced potatoes and gorgonzola.
I like this combination, oranges or goji berries would also go well with it because it adds a sweet component.
Other radicchio salad ideas can be found below:
5. Variants and New Ideas for Radicchio Salad
To make it practical and clear for you, you will find a radicchio salad table below:
Radicchio with…
Dressing
Spices
Vegetables
Other
Balsamic Dressing
Old balsamic + olive oil
Salt, pepper, little sugar
Tomatoes, fennel, oranges, olives
Bread cubes as croutons, walnuts, cashews
Balsamic Rahmdressing
Old balsamic + creme fraiche + olive oil
Salt, pepper, sugar, garlic
Zucchini steamed or fried, tomatoes, oranges, dried tomatoes, cucumber slices.
Goat cheese or Chamembert baked or fried, walnuts
Joghurt dressing
Yogurt + white wine vinegar + lemon juice + little olive oil + linseed oil
Hello Thomas,
Thank you for the very appealing recipe and the many ideas.
Your table with the variants is very helpful.
I have made the salad several times now and it tastes excellent.
Love greetings Cathleen