The salad behind the “5-Ingredient Tomato Salad” headline is Ina Garten’s Tomato & Avocado Salad. The headline is shorthand, not a complete ingredient count: Garten’s official recipe also lists red onion, olive oil, salt, pepper and baby arugula, alongside avocado, tomatoes and lemon juice. It is a no-cook, beginner-level salad that serves 4–6 and is served at room temperature.
Which Ina Garten tomato salad is it?
It is the Tomato & Avocado Salad, not Garten’s separate Heirloom Tomato and Blue Cheese Salad. The official recipe page confirms the name and method; Garten shared the recipe from Cook Like a Pro in July 2018. The cookbook lists it on page 61.
The “five-ingredient” wording in the headline simplifies the official recipe. That recipe lists lemon juice, avocados, cherry or grape tomatoes, red onion, olive oil, kosher salt, freshly ground black pepper and baby arugula. See Garten’s official Tomato & Avocado Salad recipe.
What you need
- ¼ cup plus 2 tablespoons freshly squeezed lemon juice, divided
- 2 firm, ripe Hass avocados
- 2 pints cherry or grape tomatoes
- ½ cup medium-diced red onion
- Good olive oil
- Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
- 3 ounces baby arugula
Garten’s recipe is marked beginner and yields 4–6 servings. It does not specify a quantity for the olive oil, salt or pepper; season to taste as directed on the recipe page.
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How to assemble the salad
- Put ¼ cup lemon juice in a bowl.
- Peel or scoop out the avocados, dice them, and immediately toss them in the lemon juice.
- Halve the tomatoes and add them with the red onion.
- Whisk the remaining 2 tablespoons lemon juice with olive oil, salt and pepper to make the dressing.
- Dress the tomato-avocado mixture, add the arugula and enough additional dressing to coat, then season and toss. Serve at room temperature.
The title article notes that lemon juice helps limit avocado browning; the official method’s practical safeguard is to toss the diced avocado with lemon juice as soon as it is cut. Choose firm, ripe avocados so they hold their shape when mixed.
Why the name matters
Garten has another tomato salad, but it is a different recipe: Heirloom Tomato and Blue Cheese Salad, with ingredients including red wine vinegar, Roquefort and basil. A 2022 Kitchn review covers that dish, not the Tomato & Avocado Salad. Its suggestion to use a serrated knife for slicing tomatoes is a reviewer tip, not a requirement in Garten’s avocado salad recipe.
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Where the recipe appeared
Garten introduced the Tomato & Avocado Salad as a recipe from Cook Like a Pro, which was due out that October, in a July 19, 2018 post. The official cookbook page indexes it on page 61. In a July 21, 2023 summer-recipe post, she included it among five of her most-clicked summer recipes; the post gives no click count.
Quick Recap
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