Cantaloupe and Prosciutto Arugula Salad with Mint Yogurt Dressing

This easy to prepare Cantaloupe and Prosciutto Salad is packed with fresh ingredients, including strawberries, arugula, and goat cheese and is topped with a delicious mint yogurt dressing. It makes for a delightful side salad, but is also totally satisfying as a meal.

(This recipe for Cantaloupe and Prosciutto Arugula Salad with Mint Yogurt Dressing was originally published in April 2012, but was updated with new photos in 2018).

I hope you’ll excuse me if my next couple weeks (OK, maybe 1.5 months) of recipes are a bit simpler than usual. It seems that we’ve entered that crazy busy time in wedding planning when it’s total crunch time and pretty much every minute of my life is packed with something or the other. Free time in the kitchen? Is at a minimum. So, dinners for me will be fairly simple for the next several weeks. And they’ll also likely provide me without enough leftovers for lunches the next day or so. A girl’s still gotta eat, so I’ll still be cooking, but it will likely mostly be salads and simple light fare for this hot weather and to make sure I stay in ultimate wedding shape until June 9 (which is laughable, considering I have done next to nothing to get in wedding shape up to now… Oops. It’s never too late to start?).

It really hit me this weekend when I realized we only have seven weekends left before the wedding. And since this weekend is my wedding shower (!!!) and the next is my bachelorette party (!!!), that leaves us with five. Five weekends to tackle a crazy large to-do list that’s giving me a minor anxiety attack every time I look at it. Really though, we are trucking along through everything and we know it’s going to be perfect no matter what (to us at least!), so we’re trying our best to keep stress at a minimum. And easy, delicious meals are certainly helping!

This one, Cantaloupe Arugula Salad with Prosciutto and Mint Yogurt Dressing, is one of them. You can throw it together in a snap and it has basically every flavor you could desire. I have a feeling it will become a summer staple in my house. Also, please tell me to shut up if you’re sick of all my wedding talk. But for the next 1.5 months, it’s definitely top-of-mind for me!

CANTALOUPE AND PROSCIUTTO ARUGULA SALAD WITH MINT YOGURT DRESSING RECIPE

OK, so yes, I’ve been eating this salad as a meal, but if you’re having company, you should probably make it an appetizer or side dish. Some people are mighty picky about salad for dinner and will get up and leave your party if you’re trying to make this the main dish. But if you happen to be a salad lover who’s having a ridiculously busy spring and want something fast and easy that’s also super satisfying, this cantaloupe and prosciutto salad is totally fine as an entree. The leftovers also make a great lunch the next day!

Believe it or not, this was my first time cutting up a cantaloupe. I never buy cantaloupe or honeydew for some reason and really only eat it when I go to my parents’ house (my mom always has some cut up in the fridge in the summer!). It was easy and I don’t know why I don’t keep it around more often.

When I make salads, you’ll rarely ever find me using iceberg lettuce or even romaine. I like “real” greens and am obsessed with the spicy kick arugula brings. It pairs perfectly with the sweet fruit like cantaloupe and strawberries and salty meat like prosciutto. Once your fruit and prosciutto are chopped, all you need to do is toss everything together in a big bowl.

For the dressing, I put  Greek yogurt, fresh mint leaves, and freshly squeezed lime juice in a blender and blended the ingredients together until smooth. It turned out to be a nice summery minty color. Mint green does seem to be the color of the season, after all.

I didn’t want to dress my salad until I served it, so I put some salad in a bowl and drizzled the yogurt dressing over the top. A little fresh cracked pepper goes perfectly on top.

And the perfect summer salad was born. Seriously though, this salad has everything you could want: the sweet, the salty, and the spicy. And can you get over how beautiful the colors are?? I cannot. Plus, a light minty dressing that I basically want to put on everything in life now.

Everyone knows that cantaloupe and prosciutto together is a match made in heaven and now I know that an cantaloupe and prosciutto arugula salad (with strawberries and a minty dressing) is my idea of an even better heaven! If I’m going to eat a salad as a meal, I generally want some cheese involved, too (right??), but I didn’t feel like anything was missing in this salad! Maybe that’s just the power of prosciutto?

Whatever the case, these are the kinds of meals that will be my life for the next several weeks. But really, I’m perfectly OK with that because it’s 80-something degrees in Boston and who wants to slave over a hot stove anyway? I officially got my first sunburn of the season yesterday when I sat outside for 6 hours watching the Boston Marathon. Ugh, I didn’t realize how much sun I was getting until a marathon runner speeding by us at mile 24 yelled out, “You’re turning red! You need sunblock!” And he was correct. Happy Summer weather y’all. I will definitely remember from now on.

Are you especially busy right now or are you enjoying the lull the beginning of summer sometimes brings?

For more delicious salads, check out my Salmon BLT Salad with Chipotle Buttermilk Dressing or my Honey Lime Peach Salad with Roast Beef and Turkey. I also love this Fresh Melon Mint Caprese Salad from The Wooden Skillet!