Spring Roll Salad

As you prep to make spring rolls you can go two ways: chop up the ingredients, add them to a bowl and drizzle the sauce over it, or wrap them up in a fresh lettuce leaf, island style, and dip in the sauce.

I'm not a fan of rice wraps for a few reasons. The texture and flavor is just not my favorite, it seems like empty carbs to me, and there's solid scientific evidence that rice carries an unhealthy amount of arsenic. Rice naturally soaks up arsenic from the soil and water it's grown in.

My favorite thing about this salad is the mix of herbs. I always add some fresh mint, cilantro, and basil. Sprouted greens and chives are also a nice addition, but any greens you have around will work. I usually default to shrimp because it reminds me of shrimp spring rolls, but feel free to add your favorite protein here.

For the dressing or sauce, I go with peanut sauce (recipe below) because it's clean and easy to pull together with ingredients I usually have around. It's also easy to sub the peanut butter with almond butter or another seed or nut butter. All that said, feel free to use a more orange-based sauce like this Thai dipping sauce, or the umami dressing from this Thai chicken salad.

If you decide to roll the ingredients in lettuce leaves, all the veggies tuck in nicely when sliced long and thin so they can be tightly rolled up. And it helps to choose wide lettuce leaves. I slice the shrimp in half the long way to make the roll less bulky and easier to fold and I use toothpicks to secure them. You can also use the cilantro stems to tie the rolls together.