Beetroot salad

Once your beetroot is cooked, let them cool before handling. The juice from beetroot is deep red and will stain everything it touches. It’s easier to get the colour off your fingers if you rub a few drops of oil on your hands before cutting the roots. Cooked beetroot is soft and easy to cut. You can start by halving them and then cut at an angle to get wedges that will look good in the salad. If your beetroots are very big, halve the wedges before making your salad.

Raw beetroot is edible but very hard. If you want raw beetroot in your salad, the best way is to use a mandolin slicer. This tool lets you slice the roots very thinly, which can be very decorative. Or you can make matchstick-thin beetroot julienne. Either way, take care not to get beetroot juice on clothes or sensitive surfaces, as the red stains are hard to remove.

If you are boiling your beetroot, there is hardly any preparation needed. Just cut any stems away from the root before popping them in the pot. After boiling, it’s easy to rub the skins off the roots and wash them with cold water. Another way of cooking beetroot is in the oven. For this, you can peel the roots and cut them into wedges before drizzling with oil and baking them at around 200°C until they are soft.

One of the best accompaniments to beets is cheese. Particularly goat and sheep’s milk cheese such as chèvre or feta. The cheese can join the beets in a salad, or it can be baked with the roots for the last few minutes in the oven. Other oven-baked autumnal veggies, like celeriac and parsnip, also go well with beetroot.

When using cooked beetroot in a salad the classic pairing is goat cheese, toasted walnuts, and honey. Our recipe has orange wedges, which complements the deep and earthy beetroot flavour very well. If you want to make a salad with raw beetroot, you can pair it with chèvre and thinly sliced apple together with chickpeas and a mustard vinaigrette. You can also use fresh herbs in beetroot salad, the classic herb is parsley but you can also try chervil.