Delicious Grilled Panzanella Salad with colorful sweet bell peppers, artichoke hearts, and white beans tossed in a flavorful white balsamic dressing. Make it on the barbecue for an easy outdoor summer meal with your favorite grilled protein! Vegan!
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Byron Katie
This Tuscan-style grilled panzanella salad also known as Italian Bread Salad is perfect for warm summer nights. We take the classic panzanella salad recipe, but grill it. No indoor cooking is needed! But really, it is so tasty and easy, you’ll be making it all year round ( and yes you can use a grill pan on your stove top. Grilled colorful bell peppers along with sweet onion and grilled rustic bread get a boost in flavor from a little toasty char. Tossed with white beans, artichokes, and lots of fresh peppery basil, it’s dressed with a simple flavorful white balsamic vinaigrette. Pretty satisfying as is or fancy it up with chèvre ( or feta cheese) and kalamata olives. Check out these warm weather recipes for more inspiration 75+ Light & Healthy Summer Recipes and 50 Grilling Recipes for Summer.
Table of Contents
Ingredients in Grilled Panzanella Salad
Ingredient Notes
- Grill-able Veggies: Red bell pepper, yellow bell pepper, zucchini, summer squash
- Sweet onion- so good grilled, feel free to swap out with yellow onion, white onion or red onion.
- White beans- these add a creamy protein richness. Swap out with chickpeas or kidney beans.
- Rustic bread- thick slices crusty sourdough is perfect here for grillingsourdough, country white, or multi-grain. Day-old bakery bread is perfect! Or use your own sourdough bread!
- White balsamic vinegar- we love the flavor here but you can also use champagne vinegar, rice vinegar, white wine vinegar, red wine vinegar, or apple cider vinegar.
- Olive oil– good quality extra virgin olive oil is the best.
- Fresh Herbs – we use fresh basil, but flat leaf parsley, would be tasty too.
- Optional Additions: Cherry tomatoes or heirloom tomatoes, sturdy lettuce, like romaine, cucumbers, feta cheese, capers, kalamata olives.
How to make Grilled Panzanella Salad
Step One: Slice bread about 1 inch thick. If your bread is already sliced- no problem! Just watch it on the grill, as the thinner it is the more quickly it will toast. Cut peppers into about 4 pieces per pepper, cutting so there is more flat surface area to grill.
Step Two: Preheat the grill. Brush bread and peppers with oil and salt. Grill hot until lightly charred, yet still leaving the peppers and onions with a little crunch, and the bread toasty. Set grilled veggies aside to cool.
Step Three: Whisk up the vinaigrette in a small bowl. This is a lovely bright and subtly sweet dressing that works well for a lot of tender summer green salads.
Step Four: Assemble the salad in a large bowl.
Add the drained beans, artichoke hearts, and dressing to your bowl. Add torn basil leaves.
Step Five: Tear in the grilled bread. This gives irregular edges that soak up the dressing yet still leave crunchy crusty parts. Alternatively, you can cube the bread with a knife and it may stay a bit more crusty if that is your preference.
To SERVE: Toss salad all together and serve immediately! This is a fun one for entertaining outdoor dinner parties. It is easy to throw together while visiting with guests.
Grilled Panzanella Recipe FAQS
A nice crusty sourdough is great for this- rustic sourdough, country white, or multi-grain. Day-old bakery bread is perfect! Or use your own sourdough bread!
This salad is believed to be invented in the 1500’s as to not waste food. Stale bread and ripe vegetables thrown together created a masterpiece that we love to this day! Pane means ‘bread’ and zanella means ‘soup bowl’.
Tuscan bread salad or Panzanella is made of stale bread and juicy fruit or veggies. The bread soaks up all the luscious juices of the dressing and salad ingredients creating a hearty delicious salad.
Panzanella originates from the Italian countryside, where farmers would combine surplus vegetables with old bread to create a hearty meal.
What to Serve with Grilled Panzanella Salad
The salad can be served on its own as a main course salad as well!
More Recipes You May Enjoy
Hope you enjoy the salad and please let us know if you make it, and rate it in the comments below!
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Grilled Panzanella Salad
- Prep Time: 15 minutes
- Cook Time: 20 minutes
- Total Time: 35 minutes
- Yield: 8 cups
- Category: Salad, vegan
- Method: Grilled
- Cuisine: Italian
- Diet: Vegan
Description
Grilled Panzanella Salad with colorful bell peppers, artichoke hearts, and white beans tossed in a flavorful white balsamic dressing. Make it on the grill for easy outdoor summer meals! Simple to make and totally vegan!
Ingredients
Salad
- 1/2 of a rustic bread loaf, about 4 slices, cut into 1 ” slices (smaller is fine if your loaf is pre-sliced)
- 3 bell peppers varies colors, cutting so there is more flat surface area to grill, about 4 pieces per pepper ( or add grilled zucchini and summer squash)
- 1 sweet onion, slice in 1/2″ thick rings
- olive oil for brushing
- 15 oz white beans, drained- see notes.
- 15 oz artichoke hearts in water, drained, and sliced into bite-size pieces
- 1 cup basil leaves, torn
- optional additions: romaine, cherry tomatoes,kalamata olives, capers, feta or goat cheese
Vinaigrette
- 1/2 cup white balsamic
- 4 tablespoons lemon juice
- 2 garlic cloves, minced
- 1/2 cup olive oil
- 1 teaspoon sea salt
- 1/2 teaspoon black pepper
Instructions
- Preheat grill to medium high.
- Brush olive oil on all sides of peppers, onions and bread slices. Sprinkle with salt just before placing on a preheated hot grill.
- Grill until peppers and onions are lightly charred on both sides and the bread slices are toasty on both sides. Set aside to cool.
- In a small bowl, whisk the vinaigrette.
- Drain the white beans and place them in the bowl with the artichoke hearts.
- Add half of the vinaigrette and toss together.
- Cut the grilled veggies into bite-size pieces and tear the bread into bite-sized pieces and toss in the bowl along with fresh basil leaves.
- Taste and add more dressing and salt and pepper as needed.
- Toss or top with any optional additions: cherry tomatoes, chopped romaine, kalamata, or cheese if you like.
Notes
You may not need all the dressing- keep it up to 5 days, it is great on a green salad, steamed greens, grilled veggies.
Feel free to leave out the white beans, or swap out for this grilled chicken, sliced, or cut into bite sized pieces.
Nutrition
- Serving Size: 1 cup
- Calories: 325
- Sugar: 8.2 g
- Sodium: 477.9 mg
- Fat: 11.2 g
- Saturated Fat: 1.6 g
- Carbohydrates: 49.6 g
- Fiber: 18.5 g
- Protein: 12.6 g
- Cholesterol: 0 mg
This is so amazing!
Happy you enjoyed Jan!
Once again a winner! Kids fought for the last pieces of bread! I added both bell peppers & zucchinis aside from beans and artichoke and it was finished clean! Incredible how much vegetables we get to eat with your recipes!!
Awesome! So glad you are enjoying. Thanks so much for the review!