Light and Crisp Nicoise Salad (Salade Niçoise)

What Is Niçoise Salad?

Nicoise Salad (referred to as Salade Niçoise in French), originates from Nice, France and features light, crisp vegetables and tuna. It’s both healthy, yet hearty, and while it can take a little time to prep everything, it requires very little effort to bring together.

The simple prep includes: blanched green beans until crisp-tender, potatoes that are boiled whole, hard boiled eggs that are halved or quartered, and high quality jarred or canned tuna. Not fresh tuna. We love Tonnino tuna, it is truly decadent.

Pile everything atop a bed of buttery lettuce leaves — either Bibb or butter lettuce works great — then add lots of Niçoise olives, ripe tomatoes, capers, and anchovies.

You can’t go wrong with a drizzle of a nice extra virgin olive oil, but we love this Niçoise Salad Dressing made with Niçoise olives. All that’s left is to chill a bottle of Provence rosé!

What’s In A Nicoise Salad?

The combination of ingredients in Nicoise Salad is one of the most beautiful ways to celebrate high quality ingredients.

• Green beans: Or haricots verts (French beans) — we prefer the latter.
• Small new potatoes: These can be left whole or halved depending on their size.
• Hard boiled eggs: Sometimes we substitute with a soft boiled egg, but hard boiled is traditional.
• Ripe tomatoes: Tomatoes are best in summer. Look for ripe tomatoes, any shape or variety you like: heirloom, cherry tomatoes, grape, Roma, really anything!
• Butter or Bibb lettuce leaves: You want to use a soft, buttery lettuce. Any variety!
• High quality canned tuna, such as Tonnino tuna. You might see restaurants in America serving Nicoise salad with fresh grilled tuna or pan seared tuna, but this is not traditional. Jarred tuna is where it’s at!
• Anchovies and capers: Yes, these are necessary, and yes, you will love them!
• Niçoise olives: These are small black olives grown in southwestern France. We’re lucky enough to have them available at the olive bar at Whole Foods, but if you can’t find fresh, jarred is just fine. A decent alternative is pitted Kalamata olives, though not the same flavor).
• Flaky sea salt: To season everything!

How To Make This Classic French Salad

1. Bring a large pot of water to a boil. This will be used multiple times! First, you’ll blanch string beans, then cook potatoes until tender, and finally you can use it a third time to make hard boiled eggs.
2. You’ll also want large bowl of ice water ready. This is to stop the cooking process for the haricots verts and eggs after cooking. The potatoes will need to drain after cooking.
3. Chop the ingredients. You can chop or leave the string beans whole, but you’ll want to halve or quarter the eggs and tomatoes. Potatoes can be left whole or halved as well.
4. Assemble the Niçoise salad. Lay all ingredients on top of a bed of lettuce leaves on a large platter. Add remaining ingredients: anchovies, capers, Nicoise olives, and tuna. Be sure to season the tomatoes and eggs with flaky sea salt. Freshly grated black pepper is a delicious addition.
5. Dress the salad. Either drizzle with a high quality EVOO and fresh lemon juice or consider making our Nicoise Salad Dressing, which features those delicious Niçoise olives.

That’s it! You can make assembly a bit easier by prepping the green beans, eggs, and potatoes a few days in advance, but wait to chop the tomatoes until right before serving.

Nicoise Salad Dressing

You could certainly dress this Nicoise salad with extra virgin olive oil and a squeeze of fresh lemon juice (whisk together in a small bowl to emulsify — and consider adding just a touch of Dijon mustard!), but we really love this olive vinaigrette made with Nicoise olives and a splash of sherry vinegar. It’s also got lots of fresh basil leaves, which we think brightens up the entire salad!

This salad dressing can be made up to 5 days in advance. Just refrigerate until needed, then allow to come to room temperature to loosen a bit before serving.

The Best Tuna For Salad

We’ll say it again and again: this salad recipe really deserves a high quality canned or jarred tuna. We recommend Tonnino. Yes, it is pricy, but we just wait until it’s on sale (this happens often!) and stock up with a few jars so they’re always on hand. If you have extra tuna lying around, we also use it in this White Bean Salad with Tuna.

You can use Yellowfin or Albacore tuna. We do not, however, recommend chunk light for this salad.

Serving Suggestions

A classic Salade Niçoise requires nothing more than a cool, crisp glass of wine. If, however, you want to add some crusty baguette on the side, we wouldn’t shy away from that.

If this is part of a larger meal, consider adding our Cucumber Gazpacho to start.