So what if it's zero degrees sometimes! Here are 15 bonafide Genius Recipes that will keep you in vegetables and dressings (and, occasionally, legumes and eggs and meats) from now until the sun sticks around long enough to grow a good tomato.

Better yet, bundled up in each of these recipes are smart techniques you can put to work on all of your salads, all year long—I've unbundled them below.

Dressing Hacks

Make so-so vinegar tastes like the fancy stuff with an itty bitty slosh of red wine.

Or! By steeping chopped red onion in it for a spell, then straining it out.

For an extra-bright, crisp salad, add crushed ice.

Didn't believe me about the ice? Here it is again. (Also, you don't need olive oil to make a balanced dressing, and in this case, you're better off without it.)

You can make a creamy dressing without dairy of any kind, thanks to a whole soft-boiled egg...

…or stale bread!

Caesar salad can skip the egg and add balsamic vinegar (what?) and still be Caesar.

Waiter, there's ____ in my salad!

Whole garlic cloves, tamed in boiling water, then sizzled in bacon fat!

Crispy brown rice!

Two kinds of cheese!

A cup of Greek yogurt!

Lettuce can take the heat.

You can dump scrambled eggs and hot pancetta dressing over a salad and it won't upset the lettuce. Or maybe it will, and that's the best part.

Same deal with sizzling ground pork, vinegar, and mashed hard-cooked egg yolks.

Lettuce? We don't need no stinking lettuce.

Roasted squash, chickpeas, and tahini dressing will do.

Or roasted orange segments, peel and all.

Got a genius recipe to share—from a classic cookbook, an online source, or anywhere, really? Please send it my way (and tell me what's so smart about it) at [email protected]. Thanks to Contributors Editor Sarah Jampel for the nudge to gather these up!