Fall Harvest Salad Recipe: Easy Pear and Walnut Salad

Ripe pear sliced thin enough to see through, sharp blue cheese, toasted walnuts, and a golden vinaigrette you pour over the whole platter at the table.

This fall harvest salad recipe earns its place on a table where everything else is warm and heavy, and it takes about twenty minutes with no oven involved.

Grab your biggest platter and let’s make it.

Why You’ll Love This Recipe

• No oven, and the only heat involved is a few minutes of toasting walnuts.
• The apple cider vinegar dressing needs one bowl and a whisk, and it keeps for days in the fridge.
• Almost everything can be prepped ahead, so you’re only slicing fruit at the last minute.
• A platter of it reads as a centerpiece, which is a lot of payoff for an easy pear and walnut salad.
• Vegetarian and gluten free as written, which covers most of a table without a second dish.

When and Who This Is For

This is the salad for the meal where everything else on the table is warm, soft and beige. It has an obvious home as a Thanksgiving harvest salad, but it does the same job at the first Sunday roast of the season, or at a dinner party where you want one dish nobody has to keep checking on.

It’s also what to make when you’ve been asked to bring something and would rather not turn up with another casserole.

It’s the perfect fall vegetarian salad, and gluten free too if you check the label on your Dijon.

For the salad

• 6 cups mixed greens (about 5 oz / 140 g), such as arugula, spinach and baby kale
• 2 to 3 ripe pears (about 1 lb / 450 g), thinly sliced
• 1 crisp apple, thinly sliced
• 1/2 cup walnuts (50 g), toasted
• 1/2 cup crumbled blue cheese (2 oz / 60 g)
• Optional: pomegranate seeds or dried cranberries
• Optional: roasted sweet potato or butternut squash

For the apple cider vinegar dressing

• 1/4 cup fresh orange juice (60 ml)
• 2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar (30 ml)
• 1 tablespoon Dijon mustard (15 ml)
• 1 tablespoon honey (15 ml)
• 1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
• 1/2 cup extra-virgin olive oil (120 ml)
• Salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste
• Optional: 1 teaspoon lemon zest

1. Toast the walnuts.

Spread them in a dry skillet over medium heat and toast for 5 to 7 minutes, stirring often, until they smell nutty. Don’t wander off while they’re in there, because walnuts go from fragrant to burnt fast and there’s no rescuing them once they do. Tip them onto a plate to cool completely, since warm nuts will start wilting the greens.

2. Whisk the dressing.

In a small bowl, whisk together the orange juice (60 ml), apple cider vinegar (30 ml), Dijon (15 ml), honey (15 ml) and cayenne. Add the olive oil (120 ml) in a slow stream, whisking the whole time. Going slowly is what gets you a dressing that stays together instead of splitting into layers within the hour. Season with salt and pepper, taste, and add a little more honey if it’s sharper than you want it. An immersion blender or small food processor will get it smoother still if you’d rather not whisk.

3. Slice the pears and apple.

Thin, lengthwise, straight through the core so each slice keeps the pear’s outline. If more than a few minutes will pass before serving, dip the slices in a mix of half lemon juice and half water. Browning doesn’t change how they taste, but it does change how the platter looks.

4. Assemble.

Pile the greens onto a large platter or into a wide, shallow bowl. Layer the pear and apple over the top, then scatter on the cooled walnuts and the blue cheese. Drizzle the dressing over everything and toss gently, or carry the bowl of dressing to the table and let people pour their own.

Tips and Variations

Check the neck on your pears. Pears ripen from the inside out, so press gently near the stem. If it gives, it’s ready. If the middle has already gone soft, it’s past the point where it will slice cleanly.

Swap the cheese to suit the room. Gorgonzola is the mildest of the blues and turns this into a pear gorgonzola salad without changing anything else. Feta brings the salt without the funk, and goat cheese is the safest bet if you’re cooking for someone who has announced they don’t like blue cheese.

Make it a meal. Roasted sweet potato or butternut squash takes this from a side to something you could put down as dinner.

Add tartness. Pomegranate seeds or dried cranberries cut against the honey in the dressing.

Lean on the apple. Skip the pear, double the apple, and you have an apple harvest salad with the same dressing.

Swap the honey for maple syrup for a deeper sweetness, or whisk a teaspoon of lemon zest into the dressing if you want it brighter.

Infuse the oil. Rosemary or thyme steeped in the olive oil beforehand adds depth to the dressing.

Ways to Serve It

• On a wide platter rather than a deep bowl. The pear slices are the thing worth showing off and they disappear in a bowl.
• With the dressing in a small bowl alongside if you’re feeding a crowd, so nobody ends up with a soggy plate waiting their turn.
• Under sliced grilled chicken or a fillet of salmon, which turns a side into dinner.
• Next to soft bread and butter for a lunch that tastes like more effort than it took.

Related Recipes

• Toasted beet and goat cheese salad if you want the roasted-vegetable version of this idea.

• Easy holiday turkey with garlic, lemon and rosemary to serve it beside.

• Perfect holiday ham with pineapple and brown sugar for the other end of the holiday table.

Before It Goes on the Table

There’s a particular moment with this one, right after you set the platter down and before anyone has taken any, when it looks like you tried much harder than you did. Then the servers go in, it stops being pretty and starts being dinner, and that’s the better half. This is the recipe for fall harvest salad I keep coming back to because it manages both. Pin it now so it’s waiting for you the week you need something fresh on a heavy table. 🍐