Halloumi Kale Salad with Pesto (2024)

Fall in love with kale (really!) with this halloumi kale salad with a pesto dressing. Massaged kale with roasted sweet potato, pan fried halloumi and drizzled in a lemony pesto is a match made in heaven! Gluten free and grain free.

This week I’m sharing a salad that’s anything but limp and flavourless. My halloumi kale salad with pesto is super satisfying and packed full of flavour – you’ve got the sweetness of roasted sweet potatoes, the savoury delight of halloumi and the herby, tangy bite of pesto. Basically, this is a salad with potatoes, pesto and cheese, so I’m pretty sure you’re gunna find something to love in here!

I was inspired to make a big, bright and beautiful salad after recently receiving some gorgeous new crockery from Maxwell & Williams. The gorgeous pebble coloured bowl pictured in this post is one of the items (specifically, this bowl is the shallow bowl in pebble from the Wayfarer collection). It’s the perfect size and style for plating up a shareable salad. I think it would also be perfect for elaborately plating up a single serve of something too, like slow cooked lamb shanks on a pile of creamy sweet potato mash, with lots of sauce. It would look so fancy stacked up in the middle of these bowls. Mmm. But I digress…

Let’s get back to this halloumi kale salad. It’s the ultimate way to enjoy this leafy green, which I know isn’t everyone’s favourite vegetable. But trust me, top anything with pan fried halloumi and a drizzle of pesto and you’ll get all the salad-loathing kale-haters on board.

How to massage kale

The trick to making this a really excellent salad is to give the kale a good massage, so it’s soft, easier to digest and laced with the flavours of olive oil, lemon and salt. Here’s how you do it:

• Wash your kale leaves, pat/shake dry and then tear the leaves into smaller pieces, discarding the thick inner stem.
• Place kale into a large bowl.
• Drizzle over a little extra virgin olive oil, a squeeze of lemon juice (essential, the acid helps it break down) and a pinch of salt.
• Get your hands into the bowl! Literally, properly massage the kale with your fingertips. Do this for a few minutes until you feel the kale is softened and evenly coated with the ingredients.
• Voila, you are done. Now it’s ready to go in the salad.

If you don’t have lemon juice, you can use a dash of apple cider vinegar or white wine vinegar instead. These will also provide the acid needed to help tenderise the kale leaves.

Massaging kale (as silly as it sounds) seriously transforms it. I am not a huge fan of plain old raw kale; unless it’s really tender young kale, it can be really rough and not that pleasant to chew on. But massaged…that’s a whole other story! As well as being delicious in this halloumi kale salad, massaged kale also makes a great addition to sandwiches and (my favourite) as a pizza topping! So yummy, and because the kale is massaged in olive oil it will keep a lovely texture and not dry out and get too burned up.

This salad is really nice served slightly warm, with the halloumi cheese freshly pan-fried and having that slightly melty, chewy texture. However, if you can’t finish it all at once, the leftovers will keep in the fridge for lunch the next day. Another option is to prepare all of the salad ingredients except the halloumi, and simply fry this up just before serving.

p.s. you can definitely just use a store-bought pesto in this salad! I love to make my own but sometimes I just grab a ready made one too. Sometimes life is just too busy! And if you have any leftover pesto, make this tasty Pesto Vegetable Frittata. So handy to make ahead and have in the fridge for speedy breakfast, lunches or dinners.

*please note, while I mention Maxwell & Williams in this post, this post is not sponsored by them. I was gifted some crockery and will be featuring it in my photos! All opinions expressed are my own.