Pesto Grilled Vegetable Salad

Don’t you love grilled vegetables? I’m not sure what it is about them, but they just taste so much better than sauteed or steamed vegetables. My love for grilled vegetables is what inspired this recipe.

This is the third and final day of my pesto week! After this I will be moving onto recipes that aren’t pesto-centric. And this was a good recipe to end on. The pesto flavor is very muted in this recipe because I wanted to post a pesto recipe that used the condiment as more of a background flavor that brings depth rather than pesto punching you in the face ;)…not like that would be a bad thing.

So this healthy, delicious salad starts with four different kinds of veggies.

Red pepper, green beans, red onion, and red potatoes (I just realized that three of those four ingredients start with red….that wasn’t intentional….but it’s kind of cool…).

And then you cut them up.

For the red peppers, just cut down each side. You should have four flat slices from each pepper.

For the red onion, take off the skin and slice into 1/2 inch rounds.

For the green beans, cut off the tops and bottoms and then slice into 2 inch (or so) pieces.

For the red potatoes, slice into 1/2 inch thick rounds.

Take all the vegetables except for the red onions and put them in a large bowl. Spoon one tablespoon of pesto on top of the veggies along with 1/2 teaspoon salt and 1/4 teaspoon pepper. Mix together with your hands until all the vegetables are coated evenly. I don’t include the red onions in this step because they tend to fall apart when you are mixing everything together.

Lay out the red onion rounds on the cutting board and drizzle each side with a little bit of olive oil, salt, and pepper.

Then begin grilling! I used a grill pan because I live in an apartment that doesn’t allow real grills (BOO!), but if you have an actual grill, by all means, use it.

It doesn’t really matter what order you grill everything in, just make sure that the vegetables have dark grill marks before turning them. I started with the onions and peppers.

See what I mean about the dark grill marks? You definitely want those.

And then I grilled my potatoes and green beans. If you are using an actual grill, you will need to either place the green beans in foil and then grill them, or set a grill pan on the grates of your actual grill and use that to cook them. Or else all your beans will fall through and be destroyed!

The amount you cook all of your veggies is really up to you. I like mine to still have a little bite to them. The only one you need to be careful about is the potatoes. Those need to be tender when you take them off the grill…no one likes undercooked, crunchy potatoes.

Except for my husband. He would eat a potato in any form.

So once all your vegetables are done, move them to a cutting board and dice them up into 1 inch (ish) pieces. You don’t need to chop the green beans.

Now dice up 1/2 to 3/4 of a hot house cucumber, and 2 tomatoes. Season them lightly with salt and pepper before adding them to the bowl with the roasted veggies.

Stack about eleven basil leaves on top of each other, roll them up in the shape of a hot dog, and thinly slice them. That is called a chiffonade! And you can feel fancy while doing it.

All you need to do now is make your SUPER simple dressing, and you’re ready to go!

Just squeeze half a lemon (it should be about a tablespoon of juice) and mix it in with one tablespoon olive oil. Add a little salt and pepper, mix it up, and pour it on your salad.

Toss it all together and then add your basil on top.

Mmmm…

Here is the recipe: