Salmon and Beet Salad

Name: Salmon and Beet Salad with Sour Cream Gherkin Sauce
Prep time: 1 h
Cook time: 30 min
Total time: 1 h 30 min
Cuisine: European
Ingredients: Lightly salted salmon 150 g; Large red beet 1; Full-fat sour cream 100 ml; Pickled gherkins 5-6; Egg 1 (hard-boiled, only the yolk is needed); Lemon juice 1 tsp; Salt, black pepper, dill to taste

☆ Rate it

1 h 30 mins

A cold gourmet salad with salmon, or any other similar red-fleshed fish, is a very tasty appetizer. The salad is made ahead, before the feast, and served in individual portions straight from the refrigerator.

Historically, the term “red fish” was applied to certain rare and prized kinds of sturgeon from the Caspian Sea region, which, as it happens, have flesh that is not red at all. The word “red” doesn’t always mean color. It used to be a synonym for “best” or “most valuable”. But as it turned out, fish are most often called red by the color of their flesh, and the “red” status went to most fish of the salmon family: Atlantic salmon, trout, salmon, pink salmon, chum salmon. Salmonids with white or even milky-white flesh (whitefish, nelma) are called belorybitsa.

Most often, lightly salted salmon is used as a cold appetizer: slices without skin and bones. You often see sandwiches, canapés or puff pastry tartlets with pieces of the fish. Using lightly salted salmon in salads is quite rare. Although I have seen the famous herring under a fur coat salad modernized into “salmon under a fur coat”.

Making a tasty salmon salad is not difficult. Most of the familiar salad ingredients go well with lightly salted fish. It once occurred to me that you can make any salad from salted fish if you add onion and some baked vegetables. An example is herring with green onions, served with potatoes baked in their skins. A humble dish, very common in the last century, and now a treat.

A cold salad of salmon and baked vegetables under a piquant sour cream sauce is, though somewhat unexpected and exotic, very tasty and perfect to prepare for a holiday table: you can make it the day before, just like egg salad.

Salmon and baked beet salad. Its highlight is the sauce, made from rich sour cream with pickled gherkins. The salad is quick and easy to make, although it needs good chilling before serving.

More with salmon

Canned Salmon Salad with Beets and Green Peas

1 h 30 min

Mimosa Salad with Cheese and Canned Salmon

45 min

Pasta with Salmon in Tomato Cream Sauce

30 min

Fish Soup with Cream

1 h

Fish Soup with Fennel

1 h

More salmon recipes

Ingredients

2 servings

Lightly salted salmon 150 g
Large red beet 1
Full-fat sour cream 100 ml
Pickled gherkins 5-6
Egg 1 (hard-boiled, only the yolk is needed)
Lemon juice 1 tsp
Salt, black pepper, dill to taste

Step-by-step recipe

Turn on cook modeKeeps your screen from turning off while the recipe is open

Salmon and beets

If you’re going to make a salmon salad appetizer, get a good, meaty piece of fish. You can make lightly salted salmon yourself, or buy a ready-made portion. Lightly salted salmon is usually sold in pieces of 150-200 g. Most often a piece includes the large rib bones and the skin.
Prepare the salmon: cut the red flesh off the skin and pick out all the bones. Also remove any remaining fins. Only the fillet should be left.
Cut the cleaned fillet into cubes, twice the size of the vegetables cut for vinaigrette. Season the fillet with pepper and set aside for now.
Bake the large, dark burgundy beet in the oven or microwave. In the oven, at 200°C for about 1 hour, depending on size; check doneness with a thin knife.
It’s important that the surface of the beet starts to wrinkle: this is the sign that the root has lost a considerable amount of its inner moisture. Then the baked beet tastes slightly sweet. Incidentally, this is one reason we stopped boiling vegetables for salads long ago: the watery taste is far inferior to that of baked vegetables. Beet and prune salad we make only with baked beets.
Cool the baked beet and peel it. Cut it into cubes, the same size as the lightly salted salmon.

Sauce

Make the sauce. Whisk half a cup (100 ml) of full-fat sour cream, preferably homemade, with a pinch of salt and 1 tsp of lemon juice. Chop the dill very finely and chop the pickled gherkins with a knife. Try to cut the gherkins very small, so they are barely noticeable in the sauce. Mix the whipped sour cream with the gherkins and dill.

Assembling

Layer the salad. Spread a little over half of the sour cream (50 ml) sauce evenly over the bottom of salad glasses. Put all the cut salmon on top of the sauce.
Add the cut baked beet and level it out. If you like, add a little more pepper and salt to the beet: the salmon salad will have a more pronounced flavor.
Finely grate the yolk of the hard-boiled egg. Add half of the grated yolk to the remaining sour cream sauce, mix, and pour over the beet. You can pour the sauce not over the whole surface of the salad, but only the center. Sprinkle the remaining yolk over the sauce and garnish with dill.
Refrigerate the salad until fully chilled, at least 2 hours. This can take a while, so it’s best to make the salad the day before the feast.