Tremendous Roasted Beet Salad
Prep
15m
Cook
60m
Total
75m
Bigly says
Beets. BEETS. We're doing beets, and I can already hear it — Bigly, beets, beets taste like dirt, beets are what my grandfather ate from a can in 1962 — and to that I say, yes, canned beets are a tragedy, canned beets are what happens when a beautiful vegetable gets ABANDONED by the food system, canned beets are sad. But roasted beets? Tremendous beets. ROASTED beets that have caramelized in the oven for an hour and turned into little jewels of earthy sweet candy? That's a different animal entirely. That's the greatest root vegetable preparation in the history of root vegetables, and there has been A LOT of root vegetable history — the Vikings ate roots, civilization itself is BUILT on roots — look it up.
Here's what other chefs get wrong. They BOIL the beets. BOIL THEM. They take this beautiful purple ruby and they drop it in a pot of water until it surrenders all its flavor to the water, and then they throw the water away, and then they wonder why the beets taste like nothing. SAD. Total disaster. You're throwing the soul down the drain. The flavor goes into the water and then the water goes into the SEWER. We don't do that here. We wrap each beet in foil, we roast them in their own juices, we let them concentrate, we let them get JAMMY. Like little candies. It's just a fact.
And then we plate them up with goat cheese — the creamy tangy goat cheese is the perfect partner, it's the Bonnie to the beet's Clyde — toasted walnuts or pistachios, peppery arugula, orange segments because citrus and beets are MARRIED at the molecular level, a sherry vinaigrette, and a drizzle of really good olive oil. Big strong men come up to me. Men who said they hated beets for forty years. They take one bite, they say 'Bigly, what have I been doing with my life.' And I say, 'You've been BOILING. You've been wrong. And now you know.' It's a beautiful moment. It happens every day. Believe me.
Ingredients
- 1 lb (about 3 medium)red beets, scrubbed
- 1 lb (about 3 medium)golden beets, scrubbed(mix of colors makes the plate look like a JEWELRY box)
- 2 tbsp, plus more for drizzlingolive oil
- 1 tsp, plus more to tastekosher salt
- 5 ozsoft fresh goat cheese
- 2 tbspGreek yogurt
- 1 tsplemon zest
- 1 largenavel orange
- 3 cups, loosely packedarugula
- 1/2 cupwalnut halves or pistachios, toasted
- 1/4 cupfresh mint leaves
- 1 smallshallot, finely minced
- 2 tbspsherry vinegar
- 1 tsphoney
- 1 tspDijon mustard
- 1/4 cupextra-virgin olive oil
- to tasteblack pepper
- for finishingflaky sea salt
Steps
- 1
Preheat the oven to 400°F. Trim the greens from the beets (save them for another use). Place red beets on one large square of foil and golden beets on a second square, keeping the colors separate so they don't bleed.
- 2
Drizzle each batch with olive oil, sprinkle with salt, and wrap tightly into sealed foil packets. Place on a sheet pan.
- 3
Roast 50-70 minutes, depending on size, until a paring knife slides easily into the center of the largest beet.
- 4
Carefully open the packets to release steam. When cool enough to handle, rub the skins off with a paper towel (they slip right off). Trim the tops and roots and cut beets into 1/2-inch wedges. Keep colors in separate bowls.
- 5
Whisk goat cheese, Greek yogurt, lemon zest, and a pinch of salt in a bowl until smooth and whipped. Refrigerate.
- 6
Zest a strip of orange peel into the shallot, then squeeze 1 tbsp of orange juice. Whisk in sherry vinegar, honey, Dijon, a pinch of salt and pepper. Slowly stream in the 1/4 cup olive oil while whisking until emulsified.
- 7
Cut the remaining peel and pith off the orange and slice into thin rounds or supremes.
- 8
Toss the red beets with 1 tbsp of vinaigrette and the golden beets with another 1 tbsp, keeping them separate.
- 9
Spread the whipped goat cheese in a wide smear across a large platter. Pile the arugula in the center. Arrange the beets and orange slices over the arugula in an alternating pattern.
- 10
Scatter with toasted nuts and mint leaves. Drizzle with the remaining vinaigrette and a little more olive oil. Finish with flaky salt and cracked pepper.
One more thing
Look at that plate. LOOK at it. Crimson and gold and orange and green and creamy white — this is the kind of salad that makes guests gasp before they take a bite. It tastes even better than it looks. Make this for a dinner party and people will think you spent all day in the kitchen. You did NOT. You spent an hour, most of which was the oven doing the work while you sat down. That's the move. Make the oven work. Take the credit. You're welcome.
★ QUESTIONS ABOUT THIS ONE? ★
Ask Bigly about Tremendous Roasted Beet Salad.
Substitutions, what to serve it with, why other chefs are wrong about it. He's got opinions.
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