I love a Nicoise salad. For those of you who don’t know, it is a French salad from the region of Nice. The original version of this salad, created in the late 19th century, only included tomatoes, anchovies, and olive oil. The Nicoise salad I love is the less “traditional” version created by Escoffier, which includes green beans and potatoes. Over time, tuna was substituted for anchovies. And while I also love tuna in my Nicoise, I more-often-than-not use salmon.
So, now that you have a bit of Nicoise salad history, and background on the version in this post, let’s start cooking my salmon nicoise salad!
I start by preparing my potatoes. Dice potatoes into bite sized pieces, drizzle with olive oil, salt, and pepper, and get them into a hot oven to get crispy. Then we can work on the other components of our salad. Hard boil some eggs. Blanch green beans. For those of you who don’t know, blanching is when you put vegetables into boiling water for just a few minutes. It takes some of the rawness off and helps bring out their colors. Then you throw the vegetables into an ice bath to stop the cooking and maintain the bright green colors.
You will also season and cook the salmon. I received this gorgeous Pacific salmon from my Imperfect Foods box (along with the French green beans used in this recipe). If you have any leftover salmon from dinner the night before, this would be a great way to repurpose it! Also, you can go ahead and mix up your dressing and set it aside.
To prepare the salad, I start with a bed of the green beans and then arrange the rest of the ingredients around the green beans.
Now, this recipe is just the bare bones of the niceoise salad that I make. You can absolutely add tomatoes to it. I choose to leave them off because my roommate does not like tomatoes. I will also sometimes add olives or capers to the salad. So, feel free to play around with some of the ingredients!
Salmon Nicoise Salad
Ingredients
- 2 russet potatoes
- 3 eggs
- 1 lb salmon fillets
- 1 lb fresh green beans
- 1 tbsp olive oil
- salt and pepper
Dressing Ingredients
- 2 tbsp mayonaise
- 2 tsp mustard
- 1 tbsp red wine vinegar
- salt and pepper
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
- Dice the potatoes into bite sized pieces. Toss in the olive oil, season with salt and pepper, and place in the preheated oven. Bake for 10-15 minutes until the bottom of the potatoes are golden and crispy. Then flip the potatoes and cook for another 10-15 minutes.
- While the potatoes are cooking, boil the eggs. You can either do a hard boiled egg or a medium boiled egg.
- Once the eggs are done boiling, leave the pot on the heat so that you can blanch the green beans in the same water you boiled the eggs in. Blanch the green beans in the water for a few minutes and then immediately shock them in a bowl of ice water.
- Heat a skillet over medium heat and add salmon fillets seasoned with salt and pepper. Cook the salmon about 3-4 minutes per side until the salmon is done to your liking. 3-4 minutes per side will give you medium well-well done salmon.
- Mix together the dressing ingredients, seasoning with salt and pepper to taste.
- Dress the green beans with a tablespoon or two of dressing. Then assemble the salad by making a bed of green beans and then placing the potatoes, salmon, and eggs around the green beans. Drizzle the rest of the ingredients with the dressing. Enjoy!
