Celebrate the British Salad Season

With long lazy summer days and balmy summer evenings now in full swing, it’s a great time to make the most of your barbecue and picnicware and celebrate the British salad season with some delicious, quick and healthy salad recipes.

So often salads are included as an afterthought, and yet they add health, flavour and freshness to a barbecue. They offer a real taste of summer, and provide a refreshing balance to the distinctive barbecue flavour of cooked meat and fish. A barbecue isn’t complete without a salad.

Why not impress your guests with one of our tasty new barbecue salad recipes. Try this refreshing Watermelon, Feta and Mint salad, delicious Crunchy Beetroot and Radish Salad or the forever favourite Classic Caesar Salad. You can also impress your footie friends and create this patriotic World Cup Salad salad which not only makes a great centrepiece for the table but is nutritious and delicious too.

Salad farmers the length and breadth of the country plant the first seedlings around early March. The UK season traditionally runs from the end of May through until October, so now is the time to make the most of the young tender leaves that hail the start of the season. With over 50 different types of salad leaves grown in this country, from curly red oak and frilly lollo rosso to crunchy iceberg lettuce and baby spinach, there’s something to suit all tastes.

The UK climate is perfectly suited to growing salad leaves, which flourish in an even temperature, cooled by costal breezes. There are around 14,000 acres of salad farms, stretching across the vale of Evesham, the South Coast, East Anglia, Lancashire, Lincolnshire, the West Midlands and Hampshire. The majority of salads are grown outdoors, where the sun helps to produce the all important antioxidants and vitamins, which are needed by the body to mop up harmful, free radicals. The darker the leaves, the higher the level of antioxidants will be.