Fresh Garden Lettuce Salad with Sweet Cream Dressing

Fresh Garden Lettuce Salad with Sweet Cream Dressing is a simple and unique Mennonite salad recipe that my mom used to make each and every spring. I still love it!

Fresh Garden Greens with a Sweet and Tangy Cream Dressing

It’s not really spring without fresh garden lettuce salads on the dinner table! Salads make the perfect side dish for a wide variety of main dishes. The dressing recipe I’m about to share is actually a German recipe, a nod to our German roots.

This simple green salad tastes like my childhood. Every spring when I was growing up, we grew lots of lettuce, radishes, spring onions (and more) in the garden. It was often my job (or one of my siblings’) to go to the garden, pick some crisp lettuce, radishes and onions for a meal then wash, chop, and assemble a simple lettuce salad for dinner.

While you can certainly serve any salad dressing like homemade Ranch dressing or French dressing with spring salads too, the cream dressing is especially for those new salad greens. You can also totally serve this creamy dressing with a salad made with a different type of lettuce such as romaine or iceberg lettuce from the store, but it just isn’t the same! Crazy how that works. 

Right now, we have lettuce, spring onions, and radishes ready in the garden, and I couldn’t wait to make a salad with this special sweet cream dressing to top it off! Since I’m all about easy dinner ideas, here’s what we’re having today: Tater Tot Casserole along with this simple side salad for dinner. Simple and delicious! 

Salad Ingredients 

• Lettuce – the best lettuce is the fresh stuff from the garden or a spring mix from the grocery store works too! I usually grow “cutting” lettuce (loose leaf lettuce) in my garden. 
  
• Radishes – home-grown or bought
  
• Spring onions – or green onions. A spring onion is basically just a regular onion that has been harvested before it’s mature, so it looks just like a green onion, and tastes similar!
  
• Hard-boiled eggs – this is optional, but they add a little bit of protein to the salad

Sweet cream dressing:

• Cream – heavy cream from the store is what I use
  
• Sugar – white granulated sugar
  
• Vinegar – the distilled white vinegar
  
• Salt

Supplies we used:

• Oxo salad spinner – this thing works great to was lettuce and spin it dry right away! No worries if you don’t have a salad spinner though, it works well to wash the lettuce and then lay it on paper towels and pat dry with more paper towels.
  
• Egg cooker – my favorite way to hard-boil eggs is to use a little egg cooker
  
• Cutting board and sharp knife – to chop the veggies and hard-boiled eggs
  
• Measuring cups and spoons
  
• Small bowl and whisk – for making the dressing
  
• Condiment container – a storage container for the dressing (a mason jar with a lid works great too!)
  
• Serving container – large salad bowl of some kind; today I’m using this Tupperware square container with a lid 

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How to make Fresh Garden Lettuce Salad and Sweet Cremam Dressing

Wash & chop

Wash the fresh garden veggies (a lettuce salad spinner works great!), then chop them however you wish. I like to roughly chop the lettuce a little and cut the radishes and spring onions into thin slices.

Hard boil the eggs (a little egg cooker works wonderfully for this), then cool in ice water, peel and dice them into little blocks.

Assemble & arrange

Assemble the salad in a serving bowl.

Stir & mix

In a mixing bowl, whisk together the cream, sugar, vinegar, and salt, then transfer the cream salad dressing to a jar or condiment container until ready to serve.

Serve and enjoy!💛

How to Store Fresh Garden Lettuce Salad and Sweet Cream Dressing

Store the leftover salad and dressing (each in a separate airtight container) in the refrigerator for a week or more. You’ll easily be able to tell when the salad greens are turning brown and going bad, and for the dressing I go by the expiration date on the cream container.

Tips, Tricks & Notes

You’ll notice there are no ingredient amounts in the salad part of the recipe. That’s because you can’t mess it up! Add as many radishes, onions, and hard-boiled eggs as you like, or any other salad toppings such as shredded cheese, cherry tomatoes, shredded carrots, croutons and more.

This salad is traditionally served with the greens and dressing all tossed together; however, I prefer to serve it separately so everything keeps better in the fridge until our little family can get it eaten!

Red leaf lettuce is so pretty added to this salad! Somehow I missed the red lettuce seeds when I was buying my seeds! So I only have green leaf lettuce right now, until my red romaine lettuce is ready.

More of our favorite salad recipes:

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