Salt-Roasted Beet Salad
This fresh salad feels decadent with salt-roasted beets, flavourful orange, thyme, and pears, and incorporates your favourite greens with homemade ricotta.
What are Salt-Roasted Beets?
Small beets are brushed with olive oil and rolled in kosher salt. When you wrap the beets individually in aluminum foil with fresh thyme and orange peel, the flavour becomes intensified; almost sweet. Roasting beets definitely brings out their best side!
How do you use Salt-Roasted Beets?
Here, the beets are sliced into wedges and added to a fresh green salad, along with dollops of ricotta, sliced pear, and toasted hazelnuts.
Salt-Roasted Beet Salad Ingredients
Before we get to the recipe below, here are some notes about the ingredients you will need to make this Salt-Roasted Beet Salad.
- Salt-roasted beets: the star of the salad! Small beets are crusted with kosher salt and roasted with orange peel and fresh thyme. After roasting, the salt and beet peels simply wipe off. The beets are not salty, but seasoned perfectly and are deliciously sweet.
- Fresh greens: here we use easy-to-find boxed herb salad mix and arugula, but you can use any greens you like!
- Sliced pear: the pear-beet-ricotta combo is a real punch of flavour! If you can’t find a pear, you can leave it out; or try peaches, fresh raspberries or strawberries!
- Orange: the orange is essential to this dish. The peel is roasted with the beets adding a citrusy zing; the juice is used in the dressing, and the orange segments are used in the salad.
- Ricotta: creamy dollops of ricotta are a beautiful contrast to the zippy citrus. If you can, make your own ricotta (recipe here). You can substitute store-bought ricotta, or goat cheese.
- Hazelnuts: toasting the hazelnuts brings out their best flavour. You could substitute pecans for this recipe.
What are some variations for Salt-Roasted Beet Salad?
- Greens: substitute whatever salad green you have or like! Leave out arugula if you don’t like it, but I think it adds a slight bitter component that complements the sweet beets.
- Pear: substitute peaches for pears for an interesting variation
- Ricotta: substitute goat cheese, if you like it.
- Blue Cheese, pears, and walnuts: this is a fabulous variation, simply substitute blue cheese for ricotta and walnuts for hazelenuts, and make the rest of the salad as directed. Delicious!
- Add a protein: Grilled salmon would be delicious in this salad, or serve it as a side to your favourite grilled meat.
- Make it vegan: Use plant-based cheese
Can you prepare Salt-Roasted Beet Salad in advance?
The beets, hazelnuts, orange segments and dressing can all be prepared in advance — simply assemble the salad just before serving.
Salt-Roasted Beet Salad
This fresh salad feels decadent with salt-roasted beets, flavourful orange, thyme, and pears, and incorporates your favourite greens with homemade ricotta.
Servings: 6 Small Salads
Equipment
- Aluminum foil
- Oven safe dish or sheet pan
- Paper towel
- Shallow bowl
- Small Bowl
- Whisk
- Large bowl
- Frying pan small
- 6 Small salad plates
Ingredients
Salt-Roasted Beets
- 6 Small beets
- 1 orange
- 6 Sprigs fresh thyme
- 1 tbsp olive oil
- 1/8 cup kosher salt
Salad
- 1 batch homemade ricotta (see above for link recipe) or about 1 cup store-bought ricotta
- 1 container herb salad mix or spring mix salad
- 1 bunch arugula
- 1/8 cup hazelnuts
- 1 pear
Citrus Dressing
- 3 tbsp olive oil extra virgin
- 1 tbsp orange juice leftover from segmenting the orange
- 1 tbsp sherry vinegar
- 1 tsp Dijon mustard
- 1 tsp honey
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350° F
- Peel orange, and tear peel into 6 pieces. Set peels aside.
- Wash greens and dry in a salad spinner or with paper towels. Set aside in a large bowl.
- Brush outsides of beets with olive oil. Roll beets in kosher salt to coat. Wrap each beet in aluminum foil with a sprig of thyme and a piece of orange peel. Place foil-wrapped beets in an oven safe dish and bake for 30-45 min, or until a fork can easily pierce a beet. When the beets are cool enough to handle, wipe off the salt and beet skins with paper towels. Discard orange peels and thyme sprigs. Cool completely, then refrigerate. Beets should be ice-cold before the salad is assembled.
- While the beets are roasting, segment the orange, working over a small bowl to catch the juice. Save the juice from orange segmenting for the dressing.
- Toast the hazelnuts by placing them in a dry frying pan over medium heat, stirring often and not allowing nuts to burn; stir until fragrant and remove from heat. Set aside.
- Slice the pear into thin wedges; discard seeds and stem. Set aside.
- In the small bowl with the orange juice, prepare the dressing by whisking together the olive oil, juice, sherry vinegar, mustard and honey until smooth.
- Assemble the salad by tossing the greens in the dressing, topping with small dollops of ricotta, slices of pear, and hazelnuts. Slice beets into wedges and place on the salad. Divide salad onto 6 small plates. Serve immediately.
Notes
Wine pairing: A crisp, fruity rosé or sauvignon blanc would be perfect with this salad.
Let me know if you made this recipe! Tag @dinneratlulus on Instagram and hashtag it #dinneratlulus.