Use this simple Italian Chopped Salad recipe to make a delicious and satisfying Italian salad. Just chop up your ingredients and toss them in an Italian salad dressing!
Weeknight-easy
Beginner-friendly
You’ll Learn: How to assemble a chopped salad with that classic Italian hoagie flavor in minutes
Worth It: Big flavor, crunch, and satisfaction
Bonus: The “pinwheel” slicing technique for the perfect bite
Make a quick, refreshing, and satisfying lunch
I love a good Italian salad especially one that reminds me of an Italian hoagie. For this Italian chopped salad recipe I took two of my favorite Italian sub ingredients, provolone and salami, rolled them up and sliced them into bite sized pieces for the chopped salad.
I paired the meat and cheese with ribbons of romaine lettuce, cherry tomatoes, red onion, pepperoncini and fresh parsley. The salad gets tossed with a delicious and simple homemade Italian dressing.
This chopped Italian salad is perfect on its own for a quick lunch or it can be served as a side dish for your next pizza night! It is perfect for meal prep or to serve to a crowd.
Kitchen tools
- Mixing bowls
- Sharp knife and cutting board
- Measuring spoons
- Measuring cups
- Liquid measuring cup
Serving Suggestions
This salad is perfect for a quick and easy weekday lunch. You can prep it ahead of time and leave the dressing on the side to have lunch prepped for a couple of days.
It is definitely filling on its own, but you can add extra protein to the salad if you want to make it for meal prep. I like to add some simple seared chicken or crispy roasted chickpeas.
It is also perfect served as a side salad alongside your favorite pasta recipe. I personally like to serve this extra flavorful salad alongside a bowl of mushroom alfredo pasta or cherry tomato pasta with chicken. Round out the meal with a hearty slice of no knead foccacia.
You can also chop this salad up into small pieces and serve as an Italian hoagie dip. Serve it as an appetizer with slices of toasted Italian bread.
Italian Chopped Salad Ingredients
- Romaine lettuce
- Red onion
- Mild pepperoncini
- Cherry tomatoes
- Thin sliced hard salami
- Provolone cheese
- Fresh parsley
Italian Salad Dressing Ingredients
- Extra virgin olive oil
- Red wine vinegar
- Dried oregano
- Salt and pepper
- Garlic powder
Whisk these ingredients together to make a simple homemade dressing or use an immersion blender to blend them into a thicker vinaigrette. Adding a squeeze of dijon mustard will make the dressing even thicker.
I prefer the taste of homemade salad dressing, but you can serve this with a simple store bought dressing if you want to save time.
Ingredient substitutions
There are many ways to make this Italian chop salad your own. Its basically just any of your Italian favorites chopped up in a big mixing bowl.
I love romaine lettuce, but any crispy and crunchy lettuce is the perfect balance to the hearty toppings. Use iceberg lettuce to make it more like a chopped Italian sandwich.
In place of pepperoncini you can use spicy pickled banana peppers or thinly sliced bell peppers. You could also use sliced sun dried tomatoes in place of cherry tomatoes.
If you are not a fan of raw onion slices, replace them with pickled onions or something more mild like sliced green onion. To add even more flavor, consider including things like chopped cucumber, pitted olives and capers.
Provolone cheese is traditionally used to make Italian subs, but it can be a strong flavor. You can use diced mozzarella, shaved parmesan cheese or a little bit of both in place of the provolone.
To make this salad vegetarian, replace the sliced lunchmeat with something like chickpeas or white beans. You can even use roasted chickpeas for a bit of added crunch.
How to make an Italian Chopped Salad
Step 1: Prepare salad toppings
To begin, rinse vegetables. Chop romaine lettuce into thin ribbons.
Then, stack alternating provolone and salami on top of one another in 2 stacks. Roll them into tubes and slice into rounds.
Slice red onion into thin slices. Cut cherry tomatoes into cubes and slice pepperoncini into thin slices – deseed if you want.
Step 2: Make Italian salad dressing and assemble salad
Then, whisk together salad dressing ingredients until thoroughly combined. Place all ingredients on the romaine lettuce along with the fresh parsley and toss to combine.
Step 3: Toss Italian salad and serve!
Finally, pour the homemade Italian vinaigrette over the chopped salad and toss again. Serve immediately with some fresh cracked black pepper.
How do you make little pinwheels of meat and cheese for chopped salads?
To make the pinwheels pictured above I stacked alternating layers of salami and provolone cheese. I created two stacks and then rolled those stacks into a tube.
Then, I sliced the tube into little rounds to put on my Italian salad!
You can use this pinwheel trick with any kind of lunchmeat! You could use ham, american cheese and turkey to make pinwheels for a chef salad.
Can i prep this ahead of time?
Yes! If you want to prepare this Italian chopped salad ahead of time you can prepare it up to 24 hours before serving.
Keep the salad and Italian salad dressing separate and toss the salad in the dressing just before serving. To make this chopped salad for a party, just double or triple the ingredients and serve the tossed salad and dressing separately.
Check out these other delicious lunch ideas!
For another chopped salad to try, make this pepperoni pizza chopped salad next!
You can find the full recipe below. If you make this recipe, please rate and review it in the comments, or share it with me on Instagram!
You can find the full recipe below. If you make this recipe, please rate and review it in the comments, or share it with me on Instagram!
Email Recipe for Later
Recipe
Italian Chopped Salad
Ingredients
Italian Chopped Salad Ingredients
- 1 head romaine lettuce
- 4 slices provolone cheese
- 6 slices thinly sliced hard salami
- 1/4 of a large red onion
- 6 oz cherry tomatoes
- 3 oz mild pepperoncini
- 2 tbsp chopped fresh parsley
Italian Salad Dressing Ingredients
- 3 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
- 2 tbsp red wine vinegar
- 1/2 tsp dried oregano
- 1/4 tsp salt
- 1/4 tsp pepper
- 1/2 tsp garlic powder
Instructions
- Rinse vegetables. Chop romaine lettuce into thin ribbons. Stack alternating provolone and salami on top of one another in 2 stacks. Roll them into tubes and slice into rounds.
- Slice red onion into thin slices. Cut cherry tomatoes into cubes and slice pepperoncini into thin slices – deseed if you want.
- Whisk together salad dressing ingredients until thoroughly combined. Place all ingredients on the romaine lettuce along with the fresh parsley and toss to cobine.
- Pour Italian salad dressing over the chopped salad and toss again. Serve immediately.
Nutrition Information
This website provides approximate nutrition information for convenience and as a courtesy only. Nutrition data is gathered primarily from the USDA Food Composition Database, whenever available, or otherwise other online calculators.
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