Genius Recipes
‘The Best Salad You've Ever Eaten in Your Life’
In this Genius Recipe, Nadiya Hussain proves we have to stop throwing out this ingredient.
Every week in Genius Recipes—often with your help!—Food52 Founding Editor and lifelong Genius-hunter Kristen Miglore is unearthing recipes that will change the way you cook.
This salad has everything going for it: You can make it in one bowl. You can prep it ahead—for picnics, for barbecues, for dinner tonight. You can swirl it into a bright, herby, creamy, juicy, crisp thrillfest, in very little time.
The Great British Bake Off winner and Netflix star Nadiya Hussain designs all her salads to be “the best salad you’ve ever eaten in your life.” Here, as always, she nails it. (1)
But in all of this greatness, there’s one unlikely but irrefutable star: fuzzy, downright standoffish kiwis. Specifically, their peels.
Even if you’ve heard evangelists tell you to eat kiwis, skin and all; even if you’ve already tried it and aren’t completely convinced, it is my solemn vow that this salad will convert you—in one of two ways.
Nadiya herself is a testament to the first. In her cookbook Time to Eat, she doesn’t shy away from the common visceral reactions. In the recipe’s introduction, she likens the not-dissimilar sensation of eating peach skins to “that of licking a Russian Blue cat.” In our conversation for The Genius Recipes Tapes podcast, she compares the idea of eating kiwi skin to chewing on a teddy bear’s leg, the outside of a coconut, and something that you’d use to scour your pans.
This was Nadiya’s own reaction, too, when she first saw a recommendation to eat the peels on Greg Rutherford’s Instagram feed. But she’s someone who likes a challenge.
And when she tried it, “It was the weirdest, most wonderful thing I've ever tried because, you know, your mind expects you to hate it, your mind already decided that this is the way it's going to feel, and this is the way it's going to taste,” she told me. “It ticked all of those boxes, and I was like, ‘Oh my goodness, this is as weird as I imagined it would be, but it is still really delicious.’”
In overcoming a food aversion, it’s not just that you may be wrong about everything you assumed—it’s that you may be right, only to discover you like it anyway. (2)
And the second way this recipe may convert you? Even if you’re not immediately won over by biting straight into the little Brillo pads, like Nadiya was, a salad is the answer. Because bathing kiwis in a dressing tames their fuzz, just like pomade smooths frizzed hair on a humid day. This dressing in particular—which leans on Middle Eastern powerhouse ingredients—woodsy za’atar and creamy tahini—is good enough to drink from the bowl when all the kiwi is gone.
On one last point, let me be clear: Not only can you and should you eat kiwi skin—for ease, economy, nourishment, badassery—this salad would not be as good without it. The kiwi is a wonder of textures: crunchy seeds, juicy-tart flesh, and the taut snap of skin that acts like a chip to a dip. Or a teddy bear leg to a teddy bear. In a good way.
| 5 | tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil |
| 5 | tablespoons freshly squeezed lemon juice |
| 3 | tablespoons honey |
| 1 | garlic clove, finely grated |
| 1 | tablespoon za’atar |
| 1/4 | cup tahini |
| 1 | red onion, peeled and finely diced |
| 8 | kiwis, firm and not overripe, ends trimmed, chopped into chunks, skins and all |
| 1 | large cucumber, seedless or seeded |
| 7 | ounces feta, crumbled or roughly chopped |
| 1 | handful fresh dill, finely chopped |
| 2 | tablespoons black sesame seeds |
| 5 | tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil |
| 5 | tablespoons freshly squeezed lemon juice |
| 3 | tablespoons honey |
| 1 | garlic clove, finely grated |
| 1 | tablespoon za’atar |
| 1/4 | cup tahini |
| 1 | red onion, peeled and finely diced |
| 8 | kiwis, firm and not overripe, ends trimmed, chopped into chunks, skins and all |
| 1 | large cucumber, seedless or seeded |
| 7 | ounces feta, crumbled or roughly chopped |
| 1 | handful fresh dill, finely chopped |
| 2 | tablespoons black sesame seeds |
(1) She’s also a cookbook author, novelist, and one of my (and my daughter’s) favorite writers for kids.
(2) In addition to eating peel-on kiwis in this salad and out of hand, Nadiya and her family like to freeze them, either in slices or whole with a stick poked through, as ice pops. Frozen, the kiwi flesh turns sorbet-like inside. (Peep the end of the video above to see one local two-year-old’s review.)
From our new podcast network, The Genius Recipe Tapes is lifelong Genius hunter Kristen Miglore’s 10-year-strong column in audio form, featuring all the uncut gems from the weekly column and video series. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts so you don’t miss out.
Listen & Subscribe
Written by: Kristen Miglore
Popular on Food52
34 Comments
I don't know why, maybe it's the red onion or the amount of salad sauce (too much for the amount of kiwi), maybe the feta? Also the more I think about this salad, the more I feel that certain ingredients in the sauce don't make sense. What is the tahini for, or the za'atar, what do they add to the taste?
This salad is, what I call a mishmash in the Ottolenghi style. Don't be blinded by it's beauty because the inner values don't match at all.
So our "true" vegetables are the ones from other parts of the plant: root vegetables, alliums (onions & garlic) which are essentially a stem, and cabbages which are technically herbs that are prevented from sprouting flowers (broccoli is actually a bunch of tiny cabbage flower heads grown in cold weather to prevent blooming (or "bolting" in horticultural parlance)).
Join The Conversation