A warm roasted kale salad with crispy chickpea croutons, avocado and a creamy Caesar dressing! This is easy to make with an amazing texture. Served warm, it’s the perfect winter or summer side dish or the basis for a light meal. The vegetarian Caesar dressing is Greek yogurt based, intensely flavorful and delicious!
This recipe was originally published in 2019, and has been updated in 2025 with new photos and a new method.
Let’s do something a little different with our kale…
This Roasted Kale Caesar salad is a little bit out there, but I love it and it’s fun.
Kale salads tend to be made with raw kale, massaged with olive oil until its soft. But that is not something I’ve ever felt like doing, to be honest, so my preference is to stick to warm kale salads (like my Sauteed Kale Salad). But while that salad involved sauteing kale to soften it, we’re going in the other direction today by oven roasting our kale to make it crispy.
Then we are going to pile it high with (also very crispy) fried smashed chickpeas and then drizzle over some Caesar dressing (vegetarian and anchovy free of course) which will get into all the nooks and crannies of the kale. I also like to add sliced avocado to give some creamy contrast to the plate.
Roasted kale may not be for everyone (this is one of a handful of recipes on this site that Mr. Veggie doesn’t actually like), but if you are open to the idea, this salad is quite an epic way to enjoy it.
What type of kale should I use?
The recipe photographed uses Lacinato kale, aka cavolo nero, dinosaur kale, Tuscan kale, black kale… it has many names! It’s very thick, dark green and ridged.
While I think that Lacinato kale works best here, I have made it with curly kale in the past and that works fine too. Your cook time will be on the lower end with curly kale.
Let’s make a vegetarian Caesar dressing
Caesar salads aren’t typically vegetarian friendly, thanks to the anchovies in the dressing and the rennet in parmesan cheese. I know that some cheaper bottled dressings may not use anchovies, but please don’t go down that route. Caesar salads are generally simple and rely heavily on the dressing to be right. If you end up with a bottled dressing that is a bit “meh”, your salad won’t easily recover.
Luckily, my yogurt Caesar dressing recipe is so, so easy.
- First up, to make a vegetarian Caesar dressing, we need a replacement for anchovies. That’s easy. Say hello to capers! Capers swoop in and make briney magic happen, giving the fishies their freedom back.
- While traditionally Caesar dressings would have an egg base, I like to use greek yogurt. It’s a pretty common swap for a lightened up Caesar dressing, and for good reason: it’s creamy, tangy and amazing. But I also add some olive oil to reclaim a bit of richness.
- Garlic, dijon mustard and lemon add the expected punchy flavors.
- Let’s talk cheese. Parmesan is the typical cheese to use in Caesar dressings, but real Italian DOP parmesan uses calf rennet in its processing so is not technically vegetarian friendly. Depending on where you live in the world, you have options! In the UK, plenty of cheeses which mimic parmesan but go by the name of “Italian hard cheese” will do the job. Look for the V sign on the packaging! In the US, the name “parmesan” is not protected the way it is in the EU, so some parmesan cheeses will be American made and use vegetarian rennet. Check out the ingredients list and always avoid the “DOP parmesan”.
The dressing ends up really thick and strongly flavored, which works nicely here. It’s a good match for the substantial kale leaves.
Serving Suggestions
This salad is pretty quick and easy, but logistically it isn’t always easy to multi-task with another dish because it will need your full attention while being prepared, and then you need to eat it straight away.
So it works well paired with something that fits one of these scenarios:
- A dish that can cook outside of the oven completely hands off, like an air fryer or slow cooker meal.
- A hot dish that doesn’t have to be eaten straight away, so it can sit out to rest while you prepare the salad, like a pasta bake, casserole or quiche.
- A soup or stew, which can just simmer in its pot while you prepare the salad.
Some perfect pairings:
Q. Will leftovers keep in the fridge?
I almost never say this, but this recipe is a hard NOPE for keeping leftovers. I am happy to eat many things as leftovers even if they aren’t their best selves, but roasted kale just can’t be salvaged. The chickpeas and dressing can be kept in the fridge, however, so if you want to scale this recipe down, just don’t make the full amount of kale.
Leftover chickpeas can be brought back to life by quickly re-frying them in a pan.
Crispy Roasted Kale Caesar Salad
Ingredients
- 14 oz (400 g) canned chickpeas, drained, rinsed and patted dry
- ½ tsp garlic powder
- ½ tsp smoked paprika
- 8 oz (200 g) kale, washed, patted dry and chopped
- 1 large ripe avocado, sliced
- olive oil, for roasting and frying
Caesar Dressing
- 4 Tbsp (60 ml) Greek yogurt, full fat
- 1 Tbsp fresh lemon juice, around half a lemon's yield
- ½ clove garlic
- 2 Tbsp grated parmesan style cheese, see notes
- 1.5 tsp dijon mustard
- 2 tsp capers, in brine
- 2 tsp extra virgin olive oil
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 200C / 180C Fan / 400F.
- Prepare the dressing by blending together all of the ingredients using a mini food processor or a hand blender in a small bowl. It's quite a small batch so it can be hard to get it blending in a full size blender – if you don't have anything small enough you may want to double the recipe.
- Prepare the kale. In a large bowl, toss the kale with a small amount of olive oil (just enough for the lightest coating) and scatter over two baking trays, leaving a little space between the leaves. Set aside – we won't actually put them in the oven until the chickpeas are done.
- Prepare the the chickpeas. Get them as dry as possible, then place them in a bowl and use a potato masher to smash them up a little. We want to leave some chickpeas whole, while others are more broken up, to get a good variety of textures.
- Fry the chickpeas. Heat a large saute or frying pan with a shallow layer of oil over a low/medium heat. Add the chickpeas and let them sit for 2 minutes in the pan, then mix them up, let them sit a little longer, and repeat the process until the chickpeas are just starting to turn a more golden color and the smaller pieces are getting crisp. This generally takes around 5 minutes.Add the smoked paprika and garlic powder with another glug of oil and cook for another couple of minutes until there are really defined crispy bits and the spices are well toasted. Make sure the heat is on the lower end for this – we don't want to burn the spices.
- Roast the kale. Now place the kale in the oven for 5-7 minutes until the kale is getting crispy around the edges. Keep a close eye on it, because all ovens are a bit different. If your oven has hot spots it may not cook perfectly evenly (mine certainly doesn't), but a few extra crispy leaves / slightly less crispy leaves in the mix will work out fine.You can use the time it's in the oven to slice your avocado and grate some extra cheese for topping if you wish.
- Assemble your salad! Pour the kale onto a plate and scatter with the chickpeas. Add the avocado slices, then drizzle the dressing over the top and some extra cheese if you're using it. I don't recommend tossing the salad – it will make all the crispy bits soften up. So I like to initially drizzle about 1/2 of the dressing on top, and then allow everyone to add more at the table if they wish.
- Serve immediately.
Can’t wait to try this! Next week …
Delicious! I added sunflower seeds on top for extra crunch.
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How should I store my chick peas if I pan roasted them separately from the kale? This is always a big question of mine whenever I roast chick peas. Thank you! This was delicious!
I’ve never actually saved roasted chickpeas, but I googled it and apparently they should be stored in an air tight jar to keep their crisp. I feel like I’d want to put them in the fridge though – they could perhaps be re-crisped in the oven?
super delicious and easy to prepare.