Vinegret: Quick Beet Salad with Microwave-Roasted Vegetables
As it turns out, homemade vinegret is quick and easy to make for breakfast. After all, breakfast is the most important meal of the day. And you can make this tasty salad in less than three quarters of an hour. It's not fast food from a greasy spoon or, pardon me, from a “restaurant” with self-service kiosks on the main square. Just yesterday I made it in less than an hour. Quickly and with hardly any effort.
A small digression. The outstanding Soviet scholar and cookbook author William Pokhlebkin wrote that the local cuisine hardly knew salads before the 19th century. This salad isn't an age-old native dish, as many believe, although, along with Olivier salad, it's well known in the West. It's made from boiled beets, potatoes and carrots with pickled cucumbers, onion or green onions, sauerkraut and boiled beans. It's dressed with sunflower oil.
The classic vinaigrette (from French vinaigrette) isn't actually a salad at all. It's a salad dressing, based on wine vinegar and olive oil. It was used to dress green salads.
Of the original, only the name remains. Many people hesitate over how to spell it. Just remember: the word starts with vin, wine. It's that simple.
Ingredients
4 servings
- Red beets 2
- Carrot 2
- Potatoes 2-3
- Fermented cucumber (or sauerkraut) 2-3
- Sweet onion or green onions 1
- Fresh cucumber 1
- Beans (or peas) 50 g
- Salt, sunflower oil, wine vinegar (optional) to taste
Step-by-step recipe
- Fresh vegetables, the usual set that's almost always in the fridge. Get potatoes, beets, carrots, a fresh cucumber and a salt-fermented (not vinegar-pickled!) cucumber, a sweet onion or a few green onions.
- Set the cucumbers and onion aside for now. Wash the potatoes, beets and carrot thoroughly. The vegetables need to be roasted until fully cooked. The fastest way is in a household microwave. Pierce the beets all the way through with a thin knife so steam can escape while they cook. Pierce the potatoes with a knife too, in 2-3 places. Carrots are very hard to peel after roasting, so scrape off the top layer with a sharp knife. Then pat the carrot dry with a paper towel and rub it with a little vegetable oil, literally a quarter teaspoon. Lay all the vegetables on a large plate and microwave on full power. The potatoes will be done in 8-10 minutes. It's easy to check by piercing them with the tip of a thin knife. Take the potatoes out right away and keep cooking the carrot and beets. The carrot will be done in 12-13 minutes. The beets take a bit longer, over 20 minutes.
- The vegetables cool fairly quickly, even at room temperature. Peel the cooled potatoes. Boil the beans; you can replace them with canned peas. Ideally, soak the beans overnight, so they cook well. By the way, you can buy ready-cooked canned beans. Peel the beets separately, trying not to let them stain the other vegetables.
- Cut the potatoes and carrot into small cubes. Cut the fermented cucumbers into cubes the same size as the other vegetables. You can replace the cucumbers with sauerkraut; that's tasty too. Peel and chop the fresh cucumber. Peel and chop the onion, preferably a sweet one. By the way, it's sometimes nice to marinate the onion briefly in just a few drops of wine vinegar. Green onions are also delicious instead of regular onion. Up to you.
- Put all the chopped vegetables and beans in a salad bowl. Season with salt to taste and leave for a short while.
- Cut the peeled beets into cubes and put them in a deep bowl. Drizzle the beets with 1 tbsp of sunflower oil mixed with 3-4 drops of wine vinegar. Stir. First, the film of oil on the beets will greatly reduce staining of the other vegetables. Second, remember that vinaigrette is a sauce of oil and acid (vinegar, lemon).
- Mix the beets with the rest of the vegetables; you can add more sunflower oil if you like. The salad is delicious right away, while the vegetables are still just slightly warm.
- It makes a wonderful, healthy breakfast, lunch and dinner. Well, actually no, there won't be any left for dinner.
- More and more I think that the less time you spend cooking, the tastier the food turns out.
| Serves: | 4 servings |
| Calories: | 76 |
| Prep: | 30 mins (plus cooling the vegetables) |
| Cook: | 15 mins |
| Total: | 45 mins |
| Category: | Salads |
| Cuisine: | European |
| Rating: |
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4.7
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