This recipe is adapted from Pinch of Yum, which I love. Roasted broccoli salad is a different way to get some broccoli in your diet and the salami/bacon, garlic, shallot, lemon and parmesan make it way more delicious than the boring steamed broccoli I often make my family eat. 🙂
I made a few changes to the original recipe. The nice thing about this salad is that it is really flexible and you can make substitutions or use what you’ve got and it will still taste great. The recipe called for croutons, but I left those out because I didn’t think it needed them.
The original recipe calls for diced bacon, which obviously I love. I didn’t happen to have bacon when I made this, but I did have salami, so I finely diced the salami and briefly crisped it in a frying pan and sprinkled that into the salad in place of bacon and it was delicious. You could also use pancetta, or if meat isn’t your thing, you could replace that component with some toasted pine nuts or almond slivers and that would be good too.
I used bags of precut broccoli to make this easy. It was so fast that way. The shallot and garlic are pretty important for adding flavor here, so include those if you can. The recipe called for feta, but I subbed some parmesan instead because I love the combo. The drizzle of lemon juice gives nice acidity to this salad and you could easily sub balsamic vinegar here too. I loved this salad and I hope you do as well.
Roasted Broccoli Salad
Ingredients
- 2 bags broccoli florets (24 oz)
- olive oil
- salt and pepper
- 1 package bacon, pancetta or some salami diced into small pieces
- 2 shallots thinly sliced
- 2 garlic cloves thinly sliced
- 1/4 cup grated parmesan
- zest of 2 lemons
- lemon juice or balsamic vinegar to taste
Instructions
- Chop the bacon, pancetta or salami and fry in a pan over medium until it is golden and crispy. Salami cooks really fast and you don't want to burn it so just a quick cook. Add the shallots in the last minute or two of cooking to get them a little browned up.
- Heat the oven to 425 and line a baking sheet or two with foil. Spread the broccoli out and drizzle with olive oil and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Bake for 30-40 minutes until the broccoli is starting to char. We like this salad with some actual char on the broccoli but that is a personal preference so roast it less if you prefer that.
- Place in a bowl with the bacon and shallots. Add the lemon or balsamic, lemon zest, and parmesan and toss and taste. Add more acid or salt and pepper as needed.