Whip Up Some Breakfast Salad To Start The Day Off Right

Salad as a breakfast food seems like a bit of an unlikely concept — it's true. But then, what exactly makes something breakfasty? The results of one 2019 SWNS survey published in the New York Post show that eggs are America's No. 1 breakfast food, garnering nearly 60% of the vote, so does that mean that anything with eggs in it is automatically breakfasty and adding eggs to a salad is enough to transform it into a morning meal? Well, not necessarily. Egg salad, after all, is pretty firmly in the lunch camp (specifically, the week after Easter when you've got all those leftover dyed eggs to use up), while chef, Cobb, or Nicoise salads made with hard-boiled eggs are generally seen as lunch fare, as well.

But what if the eggs are scrambled, fried, or poached? Okay, in that case, we'll concede that any salad made with eggs cooked in a style meant to be served warm can, in fact, be considered to be a breakfast salad. In light of this admission, the classic French salade Lyonnaise, where a mixture of frisée and bacon is dressed with vinaigrette and topped with a lightly poached egg, could definitely be considered a breakfast food — the presence of bacon alongside the egg seems to bolster this notion. Once you wrap your head around the concept, perhaps it's time to start exploring other breakfast salad options.

If you remember the days not so long ago when avocado toast was everywhere (and so ubiquitous that it was even accused of ruining the finances of an entire generation), then you may recall that those fairly bland vegetables were often paired with poached eggs in order to give the dish some flavor. Well, for a nearly carb-free option, you can ditch the toast and use those avocados and eggs to top a bed of greens instead. Voilà, a new breakfast salad is born! For something more traditional (in Thailand, that is) you can fry up a few eggs to make yum khai dao, a dish that translates to "egg star salad." Instead of lettuce, the greens of choice here are celery leaves plus cilantro, while the dressing is made from fish sauce, lime juice, and sugar. For this salad, the eggs are fried until the yolks are hard, as this allows them to be sliced and scattered over the top.

Even scrambled eggs can be used in salads. Try wilting lettuce in a warm frying pan, then mixing it with scrambled eggs and sauteed mushrooms and serving it up with a side of sirloin for a low-carb spin on steak and eggs. Prefer something meat-free? Make a hearty, vegetable-packed green salad, dress it to taste, and top it off with scrambled eggs in order to transform it from a side dish into a healthy breakfast meal.