Roasted Beet Salad with Apple and Walnuts

Preparing the beets, apples and nuts

1. You can make this salad in any season, even with young beets – you will just need to squeeze out a little extra juice. For roasted beet salad, choose medium-sized, unblemished roots of the darkest color. Pick the tartest, firmest apples – Simirenko, Granny Smith or similar. It matters that they don’t release too much juice.

   

   To be honest, we haven’t boiled beets for salads in a very long time. Roasted beets taste many times better. You can bake them in the oven, but that takes time and some experience. Roasting in the microwave is the ideal option.

2. Roast the beets in the microwave. Wash the beets, pierce them with a knife and microwave on full power, starting at 20 minutes and adding 10 minutes at a time, until the beets are easily pierced with a knife, slightly wrinkled and starting to lose moisture. Beets cooked this way are very tasty, a little sweet and not watery.

3. Grate the beets and apples. Let the beets cool, peel them and grate on a grater. Peel the firm tart apples and grate them on the same grater, add 1 tsp lemon juice and stir right away. This will prevent the apple flesh from darkening, at least partly.

4. Toast the nuts. Clean the walnuts well of any remaining shell and membranes, then toast in a hot dry skillet over medium heat until they smell pleasantly and strongly nutty. Do not let them burn under any circumstances.

   

Mixing the beets with nuts and making the dressing

1. Mix the beets with the nuts. Set aside a few nuts to decorate the salad when serving. Chop the rest of the toasted nuts coarsely with a knife or just crush them with your hands. In a bowl, combine the grated roasted beets and chopped nuts. Add a little salt and 1 tbsp of ready-made mayonnaise (14 g) – store-bought or homemade. Mix until everything is evenly distributed.

   

2. Make the dressing. Mix the remaining mayonnaise with 0.5 tsp brown sugar (2 g) and the same amount of sweet ground paprika. Add 1 tsp lemon juice or apple cider vinegar and stir well.

Assembling the salad

1. It is best to build the salad in layers – the number and thickness are up to you. For individual portions, you can layer it in a cooking ring of a suitable diameter.

2. Build the layers. Put a layer of roasted beets with nuts on the very bottom, level it and press down lightly. Spread with the mayonnaise dressing and add a layer of grated apples with lemon juice. Then another layer of beets, and so on.

   

   The very last layer should be beets, spread generously with the mayonnaise dressing on top.

   

3. Decorate the top with the whole walnuts you set aside and very carefully remove the ring – the salad should hold its shape. If you like, you can try carefully coating the sides of the layers with the dressing and then sprinkling them with nut crumbs.

4. Chill the salad – 2 hours is enough, but overnight is better.

Serving

1. Serve the salad chilled. It is very juicy with a pleasant, delicate flavor and works great as a start to dinner. If you serve it in individual portions, it goes very well with toasted white bread or toast.

   

   By the way, we tried it with fresh bread, and it makes an excellent breakfast.