This avocado salad is bright and fresh and only takes 5 short minutes to make! Creamy avocados topped with a simple tangy dressing, toasted pine nuts and chunks of manchego cheese. It’s just a lovely salad!
Avocado is one of my love languages. They are pretty much the best little fruit ever. I mean, how many foods out there can you eat for any and every meal? They are healthy and satisfying. They are beautiful and so creamy. Throw them on some toast, mash them into guacamole, add them to a taco, wrap them with bacon, blend them into a dressing, or in this case, make them the base of a salad. Winning, winning, winning!
Ingredients for Avocado Salad
I love coming up with new salad recipes and this one is a little out of the box (i.e. I didn’t find another salad quite like it out there on the interwebs) but it seriously just works! All you need is a few avocados, a couple of simple ingredients for a zesty dressing and a few fun add-ins that just make dish come alive! Here is what you will need:
- Avocados: you’ll want ripe hass avocados, see my section below on how to pick ripe avocados
- Lime Juice: fresh is best, like by far the best
- White Wine Vinegar: combined with the lime juice, this is just the acid you want to balance out of the creamy richness of the avos
- Manchego Cheese: a semi-hard Spanish cheese made from sheep’s milk that is buttery in texture and similar in flavor to pecorino romano
- Pine Nuts: toasting the pine nuts gives them a little crunch and enhances their flavor
- Salt: adds and enhances flavors
- Cilantro: adds a fresh herby pop of flavor and is my favorite herb to pair with avocados
The measurements for each ingredient can be found in the recipe card at the end of this post.
Possible Substitutions:
Ok, I realize that some of these might not be common ingredients to have on hand, so here are some possible substitutes, but I highly recommend hitting the grocery store and trying the original recipe.
Avocados – no substitutes here because nothing can replace the heaven of an avocado
Lime Juice – you could try lemon juice, but lime and avocado just belong together
White Wine Vinegar – try red wine vinegar or rice vinegar (not seasoned)
Manchego – pecorino romano, asiago or monterey jack are ok substitutes
Pine Nuts – pistachios, toasted almonds or chopped cashews
How to Pick a Ripe Avocado
There are few things better than a perfectly ripe avocado and there are few things worse than an over- or underripe avocado! To pick a r