Beet Salad with Garlic – Baked Beets, Onion and Garlic Toast
In home cooking, hardly any festive feast goes by without a beet dish. Beet salads: beets with prunes, beets with garlic, or simply beets with mayonnaise. And dressed herring, of course, with its shaggy collar of beets, is an almost obligatory part of the celebration.
Beets are one of the oldest plants cultivated by people; they were already known in Ancient Greece, and in Kyivan Rus' they were called “Sviatoslav's vegetable”. Remarkably, every part of the beet is eaten — the roots, the leaves, the stalks. And beets grow everywhere, except perhaps in permafrost. Long ago only the leaves were eaten, while the roots were used as medicine — the ancients knew what they were doing.
Beet varieties with a high sugar content are processed, fodder varieties go to feed animals, and table varieties end up with people. Besides salads, beets are made into beet kvass, which is poured over okroshka. By the way, I like beet okroshka more than okroshka with kvass or tarator — okroshka made with soured milk.
Not long ago I was rather surprised at what tasty salads can be made from raw beets. We used to boil beets for salads, and we were losing out. One day we baked the beets, and since then, having discovered the real taste of this root vegetable, we have forgotten about boiling. Beets bake beautifully in the oven or in an ordinary microwave. A plain vinaigrette salad made with vegetables baked in the microwave, for example, isn't just tasty, it's very, very tasty!
A baked beet, having lost part of its moisture in the oven, turns sweet. The taste is very pleasant. By combining baked beets with various additions, you can get an elegant and tasty salad even without the mayonnaise nobody loves.
Baked beets with garlic, sweet onion and olive oil make a simple and very tasty salad. It's an appetizer that doesn't take much time or effort. Serve it cold with toasted bread or garlic toast. While the guests are gathering, an aperitif and a beet salad with garlic will get them ready for the serious feast.
Ingredients
4-6 servings
- Beets 1 kg
- Garlic 4-5 cloves
- White onion 1
- Olive oil 1 tsp
- White bread toast 4-6
- Salt, black pepper, balsamic vinegar, parsley to taste
Step-by-step recipe
- Beets with garlic are not hard to make. For this appetizer you need good large beets of a dark color, with no pale rings. Besides giving the salad a beautiful color, such beets will give the appetizer a pleasant, slightly sweet taste.
- Wash the beets, removing any soil stuck to them, and cut off the tail and the remains of the tops. Pierce each beet right through with a thin knife. Bake the beets in the oven or microwave. For this appetizer the beets need to be baked harder than for a vinaigrette salad — the skin should wrinkle thoroughly and start to come away. The beets will lose a good part of their moisture, keeping all their nutrients and vitamins, and will become quite sweet.
- The beets should cool to room temperature. Peel them with a knife, taking particular care to remove any burnt or damaged spots. Grate the beets on a fine grater and transfer them to a salad mixing bowl.
- The beets with garlic will be made with sweet white onion. This onion is not very sharp and stands out well in the appetizer. How much onion to add is up to you. Peel the white onion and cut it into very thin strips — the thinner, the better. Peel the garlic and chop it finely with a knife. For beets with garlic, 1-2 cloves are enough. Don't grate the garlic, or you'll get a lot of garlic juice.
- Season the grated beets with salt and pepper to taste and mix. Add the thinly sliced onion and the chopped garlic. Add 1-2 drops of balsamic vinegar. Mix again. Dress the salad with a little olive oil, just a touch. Put the beets with garlic in the fridge to chill.
- Make a few slices of toast from white bread. Slice the bread fairly thin and toast it on a rack or in a dry frying pan until it is golden and dried out. Let the toast cool a little and rub it with garlic cloves.
- Arrange the beets with garlic on plates, add the garlic toast, parsley leaves and a few peeled garlic cloves. Those who wish can rub the toast with more garlic, to their own taste.
- Beets with garlic are served at the start of a feast with an aperitif. The appetizer is very tasty. By the way, the salad can also be served as a vegetable side dish with meat or a fried chicken cutlet.
| Yield: | 4-6 servings |
| Calories: | 94 |
| Prep: | 30 mins |
| Cook: | 15 mins |
| Total: | 45 mins (not counting chilling) |
| Category: | Salads |
| Cuisine: | European |
| Rating: |
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4.7
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