Honestly Delicious Breakfast Salads for a Healthy Start to Your Day

It often feels like I’m in the minority, but I deeply love salads! I pay the upcharge for side salads instead of fries or chips when dining out. We eat homemade salads for dinner regularly. Heck, my birthday dinner this year was a steak salad from a local restaurant. Salads are colorful, flavorful, filled with a variety of textures, and (as long as I don’t overdo unhealthy mix-ins like croutons or fried tortilla strips) they’re nutrient-rich to boot. That’s why I’m enthusiastically embracing breakfast salads. Eating salad for breakfast is a trend I’ve just seen starting to bubble up, but I know if more of you try breakfast egg salads and breakfast fruit salads, you’re gonna be hooked, too. All you other salad lovers out there, try serving these breakfast salads to naysayers to prove that salads deserve a spot on the breakfast menu.

So long, avocado toast, we've moved on to breakfast egg salads with avocado mixed in. The dressing on this salad is full of fresh flavors from basil, parsley, and lemon (both juice and zest). And as you cut into the poached egg on top the yolk and dressing run together for a salad dressing unlike any you've tasted.

Bagels, bacon, berries, yogurt, and eggs. Sounds like breakfast, doesn't it? Agreed! This breakfast salad doubles down on food trends, too through the addition of everything bagel seasoning in the yogurt-based dressing.

Use your favorite grain as the base of this breakfast grain salad. Whole grains such as farro, quinoa, bulgur, and oats are a few great options. Then add some fresh leafy greens (it is a salad after all) and more expected breakfast ingredients: bacon and pears. Feel free to swap in apples for the pears, if you have a bounty from your apple orchard trip.

For those of you who don't wake up ravenous, this breakfast fruit salad is a good recipe to try. It's a breeze to whip up. Simply season pineapple slices with sugar and chili powder before skillet-cooking for a few minutes. While the pineapple cools off a bit, mix up the dressing. Then, toss it all together. It's a flavorful breakfast salad with under 200 calories. If you wake up hungry, go ahead and add your favorite breakfast protein—sausage links, smoked salmon, bacon, and eggs would all be delish!

Eggs and toast with the addition of tangy greens makes one of the simplest breakfast salad ideas out there. Slather your toasted bread with an oil and garlic mixture (yum!) and use it to sop up any dressing left on your plate. To really speed breakfast along you can use purchased hard-cooked eggs rather than making your own.

If you've been there, done that with the overnight oats trend, move on to even heartier grain salads for breakfast. This one uses nutty farro as the base then gets kale, bacon, and cherries added to the mix. A final topping of blue cheese adds tang and indulgence. This recipe will keep you full until lunch thanks to 5 grams of fiber and 11 grams of protein.

If you almost always opt for savory breakfast over sweet, this might be the breakfast egg salad for you. Start with a homemade oil and citrus dressing that can be made ahead and kept in the fridge. Add poached eggs and peppery arugula and top with unexpected (and irresistible) fried breaded goat cheese coins.