Bring Us Your Best Summer Salad

For this contest, we (your community moderators) decided to take a slightly different approach and let our community help pick the theme. We narrowed it down to three choices: 1) a summer salad, 2) a dish with tomatoes, or 3) a no-cook dish. The voters have spoken and our latest contest is: Your Best Summer Salad.

With summer's welcome bounty of beautiful fruits and vegetables, it's hard not to want a salad every day. Local farm stands are bursting with sweet fruits, juicy tomatoes, and fragrant herbs—all ideal building blocks for a perfect summer salad.

For this contest, we've relaxed the rules a bit. Surprise us with the perfect side salad, save us with a make-ahead salad meal, or blow our minds with a creative pairing of ingredients. And, as usual, we always appreciate reading about your inspiration, learning something new, or just hearing a good story.

Our summer salad contest closes on August 15 at 6 p.m. E.T., so get cooking...

The winner will receive a gift certificate from the Food52 Shop!

If you're entering an existing recipe you've already published on the site, go to that recipe page. Hit "Edit Recipe" (under the photo), scroll down, hit "Submit my recipe to a contest," select the latest contest ("Your Best Summer Salad"), and save.

If you want to add a new recipe, head to your profile page, select "Recipes," and click "Add a Recipe." Then upload it, hit "Submit my recipe to a contest," select the latest contest, and save.

We read every submission, and test as many as possible. But that’s a lot of reading and a lot of testing, so we’re counting on your help, too. Scroll through the submission pages and make (and favorite) any recipe that catches your eye. Then, share feedback on the recipe page. We'll take all this feedback into account as we narrow down the top five, which will be announced September 20.

Here's a full refresher on how the whole contest process works.

What's your favorite summer salad? Let us know in the comments!