Brussels sprouts contain anti-inflammatory nutrients, including antioxidants.Shaved Brussels Sprouts Salad is perfect for your holiday table to complement the richer foods.This salad is easy to make and will impress your guests.

For me, Thanksgiving and Christmas are two very different food holidays. On Thanksgiving, you’ll find me making lengthy grocery lists and checklists to ensure all the casseroles, salads, pies (plus homemade whipped cream) make it to the dinner table. It’s a cooking and baking extravaganza that usually spans a few days, with so many dishes to clean and a beautiful plate of food at the end of it all. I enjoy the whole process, but it is definitely exhausting.

For Christmas, I like to do as little as possible. My ideal Christmas morning involves sleeping in, walking around the neighborhood with my dog and husband, having a leisurely breakfast, opening gifts, watching Christmas movies, playing Scattergories and enjoying a large midafternoon meal.

One year, my husband did the heavy lifting, preparing a delicious standing rib roast that was gorgeously charred on the outside and perfectly medium-rare on the inside, paired with homemade mashed potatoes. I sautéed some spinach and garlic and made EatingWell’s Shaved Brussels Sprouts Salad while watching How the Grinch Stole Christmas. It was my first time making that salad, and it was a huge hit! Everyone went back for seconds.

Not only was this salad easy to make, but it also offered some relief from the richer holiday fare that typically appear on the table. And while it’s completely normal to eat a little more added sugar and sodium during the holidays, they can increase inflammation in the body. I love that this salad is made from ingredients that contain fiber, protein and vitamins A, C and K—nutrients which can help decrease inflammation. 

To make the salad, I thinly sliced some Brussels sprouts and combined them with finely shredded hard goat cheese, dried cranberries and dry-roasted, unsalted pecans. I often use soft goat cheese in salads and baked into cheesy casseroles, but this was my first time using hard goat cheese. I found it in the cheese cooler, next to the regular soft goat cheese. But if you can’t find hard goat cheese, you can use manchego, Cheddar or Gouda cheese as a substitute. The original recipe calls for dried cherries and pistachios, but I substituted them with ingredients I already had on hand.

Then, I made the dressing using extra-virgin olive oil, lemon juice, honey, Dijon mustard, apple-cider vinegar, salt and pepper. I put the ingredients in a liquid measuring cup, emulsified the dressing with a fork, and then poured the dressing over the salad when it was time to serve.

The salad beautifully complemented the rest of the meal, adding a nice hit of sweetness, freshness and crunch. It’s a straightforward recipe that’s easy to make, but looks—and tastes—impressive. What’s more, Brussels sprouts are one of the best foods for gut health, thanks to their fiber content. They even rank as one of the top veggies for constipation relief, something many of us struggle with during the holiday season.

I’m definitely adding it to my regular holiday dinner lineup, and I’ll be keeping this recipe in my back pocket for future potlucks and even regular weeknight dinners.