I hear salad and I hear simple and all I can think of is a bagged salad with limp lettuce and gloopy dressing smothering it in sadness.

This simple roasted corn salad is the complete opposite – it is bright, flavorful, delicious and fun. It doesn’t take a lot of time – all at once – so you can build it in phases when you have five – ten minutes over the course of your day.

Let’s get started:

Ingredients
– 6-8 husks of corn (yellow/white corn was on sale at Whole Foods, so decision made simple for me)
– 1 red onion
– 1 shallot
– bunch of cherry or small tomatoes
– 2-3 limes
– smoked paprika
– 2-3 avocados
– salt + pepper

Tools
– baking sheet / tray
– mixing bowl
– juice squeezer thingamajig
– kitchen knife
– big Tupperware container

Steps to make the deliciousness
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit
2. Lay the corn (husks on) on the baking tray and bake for 30-45 minutes at 350
3. Go have a drink, walk the dog, now the lawn, watch some World Cup
4. Take the corn out and let it cool down (it’ll burn you if you try and remove the kernels now)
5. Resume Step 3 for as long as you like…
6. Keep doing Step 5 and Step 3 together if you can multitask
7. Once the corn is cooled – remove the husks and the kernels using a sharp knife shave down the corn cob in to the mixing bowl. Don’t worry it doesn’t need to be pretty
8. Transfer to the Tupperware and put in the fridge
9. Resume Step 6

After enjoying Step 9 for a good long while – you are ready for Step 10
10. Dice the red onion and shallot in to small 1/4″ size pieces and mix in with the corn
11. Dust the mixture with the paprika and plenty of salt + pepper
12. Juice the limes with the juice squeezer thingamajig and pour over the salad
13. Slice up the tomatoes into small little pieces – bite-size-ish…
14. Put the lid on the Tupperware and Shake Shake Shake señora shake it all the time
15. Put it all back in the fridge and resume Step 9

After it has sat in the fridge for a while getting nice and cold you can embark on step 16.

16. Slice the avocados in to small cubes – now how does one do this? Let me explain

16 explained
1. slice the avocados in half length-wise and the pit will stick in one half of the avocado.
2. smack the sharp side of the knife (aka the blade) in to the pit so it sticks in the pit
3. Twist the pit until it pops out
4. Smack the knife or pit until it comes off (and for all that is safety don’t chop or cut off a finger)
5. Holding the avocado in your hand gently slice the avocado length-wise and then across the middle so you get a cross-hatch of little cubes
6. Spoon out the cubes in to your salad
7. Repeat 1-6 until all avocados are in the salad

Now back to making salad
17. Once all the avocado cubes/bits are in the salad shake it up (with the lid on of course)
18. Spoon it all in to a mixing bowl and serve with some delicious tortilla chips or carnitas (recipe for carnitas coming soon – a riff on this Texan Carnitas classic from Smitten Kitchen)

Oh… And don’t let me forget to remind you to serve this with some delicious margaritas, mojitos, caipirinhas, beers or something cold to enjoy.

I’ll be serving this and carnitas at our next USA World Cup viewing party on Sunday, so get to shopping.