A delicious and fresh salad made with fresh beets and fruit…perfect for a summer salad.
Ingredients for one Salad:
Beets, 2 peeled and quartered
Extra Virgin Olive Oil, drizzled over the beets
Salt, 1 teaspoon
Pepper, freshly ground, 1 teaspoon
Walnuts, 3 Tablespoons, chopped
Mixed Greens. 2 Handfuls (this measurement totally depends on the size of salad you are preparing)
Spinach fresh, one handful
Asparagus fresh or canned, 5
Peaches, 1 peeled and cut in bite size pieces
Goat Cheese, 3 Tablespoons, crumbled
Blue Cheese, 3 Tablespoons, crumbled
Beet stems, a few sprinkled on the salad
Oil and vinegar dressing drizzled over the top
Directions:
The beets must be cooked and cooled before the salad can be put together, so allow time for that. A bed of mixed lettuce is topped with the following ingredients of asparagus, chopped peaches, chunks of goat cheese and blue cheese, walnuts and the crispy stems of the cooked beets. Lastly, dress lightly with oil and vinegar.
My husband and I took a day trip to Tennessee, and had the best lunch at a restaurant in the Opryland Hotel. We ordered a few small dishes, just to sample what they had, and this beet salad was one of them. I will admit to you that I never liked beets in the past, and that is a huge understatement. To me they tasted like dirt, but this salad was amazingly good. So good in fact, that as soon as we got home to Georgia, I went to work creating my own version.
This monster of a salad is not a side, but a delightful light main dish, big enough to satisfy even my husband. It is a perfect meal in itself…it’s light, filling, and has an explosion of flavors. Really, you don’t need anything else but this for dinner…except maybe some great crusty bread.
I now understand why I hated beets as a child. Canned beets were all I ever had and the difference between the taste of a beet that is fresh and one from the can is like night and day. One being amazingly good and the other tasting more like aluminum than anything else.
After all these years of cooking, this was the very first time I ever bought and cooked fresh beets.
Fresh beets, wash…cut off the stems and roast in the oven
You can buy beets in a bunch or individually. The first time I just bought a few single ones so I could get different colors. They all taste the same, but it looks really pretty on the dish.
You can cook them as they are or peel them first. I found I liked to peel them because they absorbed the wonderful taste of the olive oil, salt and pepper better.
Cook them in the oven uncovered with salt, pepper and olive oil, or cover for a bit softer texture.
Cooking beets is really simple, you just need to quarter them, and put them on a cookie sheet lined with aluminum foil. In the oven they go at 350 for about 40 minutes. Check on them and when they are fork tender, they are done. This can be done a few days before you are planning to eat them or right before you make the salad. I always love anything I can do ahead of time. I like to peal the beets first before cooking, but you don’t have to…it can be done after.
Beet leaves and stems
I like to chop the stems of the beets and use them in the salad also…they get very crispy when cooked in the oven and they add a nice little crunch to the top of the salad.
Beautiful red color and they also have gold beets
The first time I cooked the beets I put them in the oven whole, which you can do…but then I found it was easier to peel and quarter them first before they went into the oven. Although the cooked red beets were very pretty, I found I did not particularly like my hands to be stained the same color for days as a result of peeling them after they were cooked. If you prefer this method, you might want to wear gloves.
Lay the stems on the cookie sheet as well, covering them liberally with olive oil, salt and pepper.
Place the beets in the oven and cook for 40 minutes at 350 degrees, or until fork tender. Underdone beets are not a good thing.
If you didn’t peel and quarter them first, peel them now and cut them into bite size pieces to go on the salad.
Chop a 1/4 cup of Walnuts
I always keep a bag of walnuts in my freezer, they stay fresh for a really long time, and it keeps me from running to the store at the last minute when I need them for a recipe.
The beet stems are off to the side. I’ll put them on the salad at the last minute for a nice toasty crunch.
I like pretty good size pieces in my salad.
Mixed lettuce and canned or fresh asparagus.
Start with a layer of mixed greens.
It’s so wonderful to be able to purchase greens clean and ready for the plate. I used mixed greens and spinach.
I’m one of those people who love asparagus, both fresh, and canned. Tonight, since I didn’t have any fresh, I went with canned.
Next comes the beets.
Beets and peaches
One peach, peeled and cut in bite size pieces. The combination of the beets along with the cheese and peaches is amazingly good.
Add goat cheese chunks
The creamy texture of the goat cheese plays off the sharpness of the blue cheese beautifully. Then you have the sweetness of the peaches and the rich earthy taste of the beets…the crunch of the walnuts…oooooh this is insanely good!
Add Walnuts
Sprinkle the walnuts over the salad
Add Beet stems
Top with the beet stems
Add a little salt and fresh ground pepper to taste and drizzle lightly with oil salad dressing.
Girard’s Champagne Dressing is my favorite. I can’t tell you how many bottles I have given to people when they come for dinner. They can’t believe something so good came out of a bottle.
Salad and crusty bread…what could be better?
Served with the most amazing Crusty Italian bread from Nova’s bakery in Charlotte, North Carolina. It is a three hour drive for us…but really is worth it.
The perfect bite is to get each amazing ingredient on the fork at the same time. This would also be amazing as a side salad…much smaller of course, but I found I didn’t want to eat anything else on the plate and decided to make it the main dish.
Super easy…light…wonderful summer meal.
