Smash Burger

Smash Burger Salad: Spinach, Cucumber, and Goat Cheese with Chicken

Smash Burger is a chain restaurant founded in Denver, Colorado, in 2007.  We don't have a Smash Burger in our small town (Canon City) but we've been to several Smash Burger restaurants around Colorado and we really like their food.

My husband and I ended up at Smash Burger the other day (our big day out for our 27th wedding anniversary!).  I knew right away what I wanted to order... a salad.  I like the salads I've had at Smash Burger and this was the second time I had this particular salad.  You can add a protein to your salad (ie. a burger patty or thinly sliced grilled chicken... I had the chicken).  I liked the salad so much that I decided to make this salad at home.  The combination of ingredients is really good.  Basically, the salad is a spinach salad with finely diced tomatoes, sliced cucumbers, goat cheese, balsamic vinaigrette, a few slices of white onion, and some seeds and dried cranberries.




These are the salads I had last week.  I used grape tomatoes and did not cut them up so that the salads would stay fresh and not get soggy after being in the refrigerator for a few days.  I worried that if I added a lot of moist ingredients to the tubs, then the spinach would wilt. I used prewashed spinach so the leaves were nice and dry.  In a dry skillet, I toasted up some raw sunflower seeds.  When they were cooled, I added in some flax seeds and dried cranberries.

The salad was good with smoked salmon.

The salad was good with meatloaf.

The salad was so good that I made it again this week.

This time I used a 16 ounce container of baby spinach, two big English cucumbers, a 16 ounce tub of Constellation tomatoes, goat cheese, and homemade balsamic vinaigrette.  A pound of spinach was enough to make 10 big salads.  In a dry skillet, I toasted raw finely sliced almonds and raw sunflower seeds and then added in flax seeds when the almonds and sunflower seeds were cooled.  I love the addition of the finely sliced almonds.  I've been leaving the onions out of my salads because I feel onions get kind of funny in the refrigerator.  The recipe I am using for balsamic vinaigrette can be found HERE.

I really love this combination of ingredients in a salad and there's not a lot of labor involved.  I hope you give it a try!