Fall colors, sweet flavors, textural variety and healthy ingredients. This monochrome Golden Beet Salad will serve you well as a side dish or as a lunch.
When the Weather Gods turns down the temperature, comfort foods takes over many menus. In order to maintain a little balance in our diet, let’s not forgo on the salads.
Key Ingredients in This Recipe
For this recipe, I cut all ingredients in similar shape and that’s julienne, stick-shaped or match-stick (if you still know that that is. LOL). Officially, julienne cut has certain dimensions: 2-3 inches long and between 1/8 inch and 1/16 inch crosswise. First square off the veggie, cut it into 2-3 inch long strips and then cut these strips in matches.
In cutting the vegetables, I was not that precise, but did try to cut them all in matches of equal size. As all ingredients in this salad have similar colors (except for the celery), I believe that similar cuts may ‘surprise’ the eater each bite, what’s on his/her fork as it is harder to single out one particular shape. It’s the combination of flavors and textures that will make you enjoy this Golden Beet Salad.
- Beets – Golden Beets are my choice in this monochrome salad. Red beets will work as well, but it will obviously change the color of your salad. Beets have a wonderful sweet flavor. Cook them or roast them for an even more sweeter flavor. They are a great source of fiber, folic acid and other vitamins and minerals.
- Sweet Potato – Another great source of fiber, antioxidant and vitamins and minerals. You can cut these by hand or make use of a special vegetable peeler that allows you to cut julienne. Roast the sweet potato in the oven.
- Carrots – No reason to cook these, cut them julienne or with a vegetable peeler, cut ribbons and cut those in small sticks.
- Celery – Use these raw and cut again julienne-wise. Celery is very crunchy, fibrous and juicy and always a great addition in a salad. Celery has many health properties as well.
- Orange Bell Pepper – Julienne these raw as best as you can, but you can also roast these to make them even sweeter. I like them raw as they keep their shape better and stay juicier.
- Walnuts – You can cut these just the way you like, I chopped them very small, so they stick to the vegetables.
How to make Golden Beet Salad
Making a salad does not need a lot of explanation. It basically comes down to cleaning the ingredients, cutting/chopping them to size and mixing them with the dressing. A few photos below to illustrate some steps.
Sweet Potato – Cut into julienne. You can do this the traditional way, hand-cut with a knife, or cut them with a special vegetable peeler. Spread the sticks out onto a baking sheet, covered with parchment paper. Drizzle with olive oil and sprinkle with salt & pepper. Bake in a 400 degrees oven for about 15 minutes.
Walnuts – Chop these any way you like. Behind our house we have walnut trees, and this time of year, our backyard is full of ripe walnuts. The longer they lay on the ground the darker/blacker they become; basically they rot away. To ‘harvest’ the nuts, you’ll need to hull them (peel the greenish coat). The blackened walnuts may not be salvageable for eating. The stain from the hull can penetrate inside the nut and discolor the meat and can result in an off-flavor.
Don’t forget to wear gloves when you hunt for walnuts. The dye of black walnuts which is used for coloring wood, is almost impossible to remove from you skin or clothing.
Alternatives and substitutes
- Red beets instead of yellow beets.
- Russet potato instead of sweet potato or try a purple sweet potato. This latter one will go well with the red beets.
- When you are picking purple-ish veggies, you might as well try to find a purple carrot.
- Last but not least in the line of purple. A purple bell pepper. I know they exist, but have never been able to find them here in Georgia. Alternatively, you could use eggplant.
- Pecans or almonds can be used instead of walnuts.
Other Beet recipes to try:
I hope you will enjoy this Golden Beet Salad. Use the tag #agourmetfoodblog when posting a picture of your recipe, and make sure to follow me on Instagram, Facebook or Pinterest.
Golden Beet Salad
Ingredients
- 2-3 yellow beets
- 1 sweet potato
- 2 carrots
- 1 stalk celery
- 1 orange bell pepper
- 1/4 cup walnuts
- 3 tablespoons olive oil
- 1 tablespoon white wine vinegar
- 1 teaspoon mustard
- 1 teaspoon maple syrup
- salt & pepper
- thyme optional
Instructions
- Cook the beets in water with salt for about 30 minutes until you can insert a fork easily. (NOTE 1) Depending on the size of the beets, the cooking time may need to be more than 30 minutes.
- Allow the beets to cool and cut the top and bottom off and peel the skin off.
- Cut the beets julienne-wise.
- Peel the sweet potato, cut them julienne (NOTE 2). Place them on a baking sheet covered with parchment paper.
- Drizzle with a little bit of oil and sprinkle with salt & pepper. Bake in a 400 degrees for about 15 minutes. They can easily burn, so keep an eye on this sticks.
- Peel carrots and cut them julienne. Do the same with the bell pepper and the celery.
- Mix olive oil, vinegar, mustard, maple syrup and salt & pepper into a dressing.
- Transfer all vegetables into a large bowl, add the dressing and mix.
- Add salt & pepper if needed.
- Sprinkle with thyme if you like.
Notes
- Instead of cooking the beets, you can roast them as well. This will give the beets and even sweeter flavor. Cut the beets in half and place them cut-side down on a baking sheet. Heat the oven to 400 degrees F and place the baking sheet in the oven. Bake the beets for approx. 30 minutes, depending on the size of the beet roots.
- Cutting the sweet potato julienne can be done by hand, or by using a special vegetable peeler that allows you to cut julienne. I can also see that you can use a spiralizer, but then I would suggest cutting the spirals smaller in order to make the mix easier with the other vegetables.
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