How To Make The TikTok-Famous Green Goddess Dip Salad

A hunger-fueled scroll through your TikTok For You Page can inspire any number of obvious cravings — dessert-style coffee, crispy rice bites, crab rangoon. But the latest drool-worthy TikTok food trend is a little less obvious: an uber-chopped, dippable salad.

Melissa Ben-Ishay, perhaps best known for her Baked by Melissa mini-cupcakes, has become TikTok’s viral queen of green since introducing her Green Goddess salad back in September 2021. The original video, which now has nearly 19 million views, shows how to prepare a salad that’s so finely chopped that you can (and will) shovel it into your face with a chip in lieu of a fork. Since the OG video hit the For You Page, videos tagged #GreenGoddess featuring TikTokers trying out the recipe themselves have garnered over 18 million views. The reviews are in: the “salad” is a smash.

“The Baked by Melissa salad is a main character in my house. We make a giant heaping bowl of it once a week and devour it with a bag of chips and call it dinner,” Brit, 34, a New York-based food writer, tells Bustle. “It looks like it’s going to be overrated, and the list of ingredients might make you think it’s not worth the trouble, but it turns out it’s the perfect salad — especially for people who don’t love salad,” she adds.

Even if you don’t have time to go to the grocery store for all the veggies and herbs needed to make the Green Goddess salad at home, you’ll find supreme satisfaction in watching Ben-Ishay make the salad on TikTok. The ASMR-y slices, chops, and crunches will send your ears and eyes into brain-tingling overdrive. And while many viral trends turn out to not be as tasty as they seem IRL — that cream cheese pepper sandwich never needed to happen — the Green Goddess Salad is actually worth it.

TikTok-Viral Green Goddess Salad Ingredients

In the original video, Ben-Ishay whizzes through the ingredients list without precise measurements, but since the salad went bonkers viral, she’s made more videos to show exact recipes. Here’s what you’ll need to make the Green Goddess salad:

For the salad base:

• A small head green cabbage, or iceberg lettuce, or both
• Four​ mini cucumbers, or one large, finely chopped
• A bundle of finely diced​ chives
• A bundle of finely diced green onion or scallions
• Optional: a jalapeño

For the dressing:

• The juice of two lemons
• A quarter cup of olive oil
• Two tablespoons of rice vinegar
• Two cloves garlic
• One small shallot
• A sprinkle of chives
• A quarter cup of walnuts, cashews, or both  
• One cup fresh torn basil leaves
• One cup fresh spinach
• A heavy sprinkle of nutritional yeast
• One teaspoon salt

How To Make The Green Goddess Salad At Home

Pull out the biggest bowl you have for this salad, as it piles high and requires a lot of mixing for peak flavor. Wash all of your produce and chop as efficiently and finely as possible — the smaller the pieces, the more dip-able it becomes. Once you’ve broken down the cabbage, cucumbers, green onions, and chives, pull out the food processor and start on the dressing. Add all of the ingredients into the processor and blend until smooth. You can add some water or more oil if it’s too thick for you, and tweak the ingredients a bit for your liking. Once the dressing is combined, pour it over your salad base, toss, and enjoy with your favorite durable chip.