Summer’s not over just yet, which is why we’re sharing Roy Choi’s light and flavorful recipe for a ginger miso spinach strawberry salad that you’ll want to eat before the season ends.
The accomplished chef, who is known for kicking off the nation’s food truck craze – thanks to his own gourmet Korean taco truck, Kogi – recently partnered with KeVita and is on a mission to make fermented foods more mainstream. In fact, it’s the KeVita, a fermented beverage, that gives this healthy dish an unexpected effervescence which sets it apart from other salads.
“When I’m growing up eating Korean food, we don’t say it’s fermented, it’s just food,” Choi tells Us Weekly, noting that Americans often have misconceptions about fermented foods. “We don’t put all of this baggage on top of it.”
Choi, 48, adds, “Sometimes I think what holds us back from fermented foods here in America is that we’ve placed so much seriousness around it, in many ways. I think we just need to make it more fun.”
And that’s exactly what the celebrated chef did with all of the KeVita-based recipes he created, including the ginger miso spinach strawberry salad. “All the recipes, anything I do, I look at it all with a sense of humor, but I always take everything very seriously. I wasn’t going to just phone in these recipes. I really had to look at it like, ‘What’s the best way to utilize kombuchas and Kevita probiotic drinks?’” Choi explained. “What I came out with was that the drinks are really great as a finishing binder to everything.”
With the salad specifically, Choi noted that the miso gives it a creamy flavor and texture. “You have the soy, which is the salty, and then you have the aromatics like the ginger, garlic and all those things with the probiotic flavor,” he continued. “Then you have the Kevita which brings the acid and the effervescence. So the vinaigrette is creamy, fruity, delicious, but then it’s also really bubbly and it just feels like you’re dancing as you eat it.”
Take a look at the complete recipe below!
Ginger Miso Spinach Strawberry Salad
Makes 2-4 servings
INGREDIENTS:
Miso dressing
• 3 tbsps yellow miso
• 1 cup rice wine vinegar
• 1 cup KeVita Apple Cider Vinegar Tonic Turmeric Ginger
• 1/2 cup soy sauce
• 3 tbsps sugar
• 10 cloves garlic (chopped)
• 1 1/4 cups frozen orange juice concentrate
• 5 tsps chopped ginger
• 5 tsps chili oil
• 2 1/2 cups canola oil
Salad
• 1 big bowl of baby spinach
• A handful of strawberries, sliced
INSTRUCTIONS:
- Blend all dressing ingredients together.
- Toss dressing with bowl of baby spinach and sliced strawberries.
