This Vegan Caprese Salad: This Cucumber Tomato Salad with Avocado and Vegan Pesto is a Twist on the Traditional post includes affiliate links. When I find a great product or service, I like to share it with my readers. Sometimes I use affiliate links so I can earn a commission for my recommendations. Thank you for your support!
This Tomato Cucumber Salad with Avocado and Vegan Pesto is a Twist on the Traditional
Keep your summer cool with this vegan caprese salad recipe! With a twist on the traditional, this easy caprese salad features avocado, grape tomatoes, English cucumbers and a vegan pesto. Serve it as an appetizer or a vegan side dish.
What is Caprese Salad?
For as long as I can remember, if there was Caprese Salad on the menu, I would order it. Traditionally, Caprese Salad features thick slices of juicy, ripe tomatoes, fresh mozzarella cheese and fresh basil. It’s typically dressed with olive oil, salt and pepper and sometimes with a balsamic vinegar. Caprese Salad is named after the Italian island, Capri.
Caprese Salad Pronunciation
When I was researching for this blog post, one of the most common questions that came up was: how do you pronounce Caprese Salad? If you’re an English speaker, its pronunciation defies phonetics and since you’ll never be able to turn this dish away again, I thought I’d touch on the topic.
First you need to summon your inner Italian. Then break the word Ca-pre-se into three syllables. After that, just let it rip in your best foreign accent: kuh-pray-zay.
Three Ways to Make Vegan Caprese Salad
Over time many different variations of Caprese Salad have come into popularity. And so it goes in the vegan world. I, myself, have a few different variations. This first one simply replaces mozzarella cheese with creamy slices of ripe avocado. It’s drizzled with extra virgin olive oil and seasoned with salt, pepper and fresh basil leaves.
My second version appears in my vegan cookbook, 5-Ingredient Vegan Cooking: 60 Plant-Based Recipes with Few Ingredients and Lots of Flavor. This version mimics the first in that it includes ripe tomato slices and avocado, but I decided for this one to take my basil to the next level with a vegan pesto sauce.
Vegan Caprese Salad as a Tomato Cucumber Salad
The version I want to focus on here though, is my third rendition. Here I put the focus on creating a delicious tomato cucumber salad by dicing grape tomatoes and ripe avocados and then adding diced English cucumber. This version also includes my vegan pesto, but I also drizzled in an olive oil, apple-cider vinegar vinaigrette with a touch of maple syrup and a dash of Dijon mustard. It definitely doesn’t follow the classic lines, but WOW! is it good!
Do You Love This Vegan Caprese Salad with Vegan Pesto Recipe?
Do you love this Vegan Caprese Salad with Vegan Pesto recipe? Be sure to check out my other Vegan Italian recipes too! If pesto sauce is calling your name, then my Roasted Portobello Mushroom & Artichoke Open-Faced Vegan Sandwiches are for you! Forever-searching for the perfect plant-based pasta dish? Then you’ll love my Vegan Baked Pasta Recipe!
Roasted Portobello Mushroom & Artichoke Open-Faced Vegan Sandwiches
This roasted portobello mushroom and artichoke recipe makes the best open-faced vegan sandwiches. Thick ciabatta bread, with a spread of fresh vegan pesto sauce, slices of tomato and toasted pine nuts complement portobello mushrooms marinated in balsamic vinegar and roasted artichoke hearts.
Vegan Baked Pasta Recipe
This healthy, vegan baked pasta recipe features lentil-stuffed rigatoni pasta nestled in a rich tomato sauce with a savory cashew cream drizzle.
Vegan Caprese Salad
Ingredients
- 1 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
- 1 tbsp apple cider vinegar
- 1/2 tsp Dijon mustard
- 1/2 tsp pure maple syrup
- 2 tbsp Vegan Basil Pesto find the recipe here
- 1 pint grape tomatoes washed and diced
- 1 English cucumber diced
- 1 avocado diced
- fresh basil leaves as garnishment
- salt & pepper to taste
Instructions
- Mix the olive oil, vinegar, Dijon mustard and maple syrup in a small dish. Set aside.
- Combine the grape tomatoes, English cucumber and avocado in a large bowl. Add the maple mustard vinaigrette and the vegan basil pesto sauce. Toss to combine. Garnish with fresh basil leaves and season with salt & pepper.
About Herbivore’s Kitchen
Herbivore’s Kitchen is a plant-based food blog started by me, a vegan home chef, cookbook author, aspiring food photographer and how-to-be-a-better-food-blogger junkie. You’ll mostly find creative and tasty vegan recipes and detailed deep dives into vegan ingredients (check out my Vegucation section) on my blog. I love knowing as much as I can about the food that I make. I’m also really into running a food blog as a business, so I’ve also got a section of my blog titled: Confessions of a Food Blogger where I get into the nitty gritty on how to build, manage, market and monetize a food blog.