How to Never Make a Boring Salad Ever Again

Julia Sherman eats a salad every single day. You’d think such a healthy diet would be boring and routine, but as the creative force behind the new cookbook Salad for President, Sherman’s leafy concoctions are anything but.

Sherman’s veggie obsession began five years ago with a blog of the same name, where she developed recipes with fellow artists she admired. She describes herself as a “really good home cook,” and she triumphs in making the process easy and effortless.

She quickly gained a cult following thanks to her fun, relatable approach—she hosted her book launch party at a Brooklyn grocery store—and her artfully composed images, which actually lead to a job as a creative developer at Chop’t, the prolific fast-casual salad company that’s the go-to lunch of office workers in New York City, Washington, D.C., and Charlotte, NC. “They found me on Instagram,” she says.

Having trained as an artist (she received her MFA from Columbia in New Genres), her background in photography propelled Salad for President forward from the start. She shoots all of the content her blog, and shot the entire book, which was something she always envisioned creating. 

We sat down with Sherman to talk about her inspiration, how she turned the blog into a book, and got her tips for making sure you never make a boring salad ever again.

When I found myself over complicating things, I stepped back and started over. The thing about making salad your focus is that most of the best salads are really, really simple and restrained, and they have a clear intention. 

My recipes comes from a curiosity about the ingredients. I grow some of my own food and that definitely colors the way I cook. There are some recipes that will make people think, “Woah I’ve never cooked with lotus root or yuzu.” But when you look at the whole recipe, you don’t have to do much to it; it was really important to me that if recipes used ambitious ingredients, they were easy to prepare.

Eating is very seasonal for me. I’m not a one trick pony. I do eat salad everyday, but I eat all kinds of thing—I’ve been eating brown rice congee for the past month after I got back from a trip to Vietnam. 

When it comes to salad, I don’t let it be a less considered part of the meal. It’s just about changing the view and portioning it to be a bigger part of the meal. When developing a salad, I always make sure there’s something decadent and satisfying in it: a fat, a nut, avocado, or a really good oil.

You are taking this thing that has always really been on the side and making it really important by putting love into something that in the past was an afterthought.

I started working there about three years ago. The founder was looking for other people who were obsessed with salad and found me on Instagram. They had been around for 14 years, but they didn’t really have a marketing department. They concentrated on the food and restaurants, and I liked that they were a brand that was really focused and honest. He offered me this open-ended position of traveling and recipe development. They really let me decide what the role looked like. Since then I became really integrated into the organization, working on their rebrand and on events.

I think people are too easily overwhelmed about the decisions that need to be made. When I go to the market, I try find something that looks cool and weird or is the most seasonal. To me it’s about finding an ingredient that’s exciting, but not necessarily something that you’re trying to transform. I think an ingredient-focused way of cooking really takes the pressure off the cook. If you have a really beautiful vegetable, the easiest and most straightforward approach is to figure out the most simple way to prepare it.

How to Make a Melon Ball Salad, Just Like Mom 4 No-Cook Meals Perfect for Summer The Purple Power Salad We’re Making For Lunch (And Why You Should Too!)