If you’re in to trying new salads, here’s one you’ll love! This gourmet salad is easy to make and easy to impress with. Using cooked beets and purple carrots along with a flavorful vinaigrette you can make yourself, you’ll be floored by this tasty salad. And so will your guests!

How to Make Carrot-Beet Salad with a Smokey Vinaigrette

Ingredients you will need:

  • 2-3 golden beets
  • 3-5 baby carrots
  • Lettuce

Vinaigrette Ingredients:

  • 1/2 cup sugar
  • 1/2 cup vegetable oil
  • 1/4 cup cider vinegar
  • 1/2 teaspoon smoked paprika
  • 1/4 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
  • 1 1/2 teaspoons minced onion

Seasoning Ingredients:

  • Fresh parsley
  • Pumpkin seeds (or some kind of nut)
  • Goat cheese

Peel your beets

Start by peeling the skin from your beets using the Rada Vegetable Peeler.

Cook the beets

Boil your beets in water like you would to a potato. Add some rice vinegar to the water to season it.

Prepare carrots

Now prepare your carrots. Chef Blake used garden-fresh purple baby carrots, but you can use whatever kind of baby carrot you’d like. Clean them up by removing any stems and peeling them.

Boil carrots

Then boil your carrots in a separate pan from the beets.

Slice vegetables

Slice up your cooked vegetables however you would like for the salad.

Create the vinaigrette

Create the vinaigrette with the ingredients previously listed, using just a touch more sugar than vinegar. Add the oil slowly to the mixture.

Mince parsley

To add some thickness and flavor to your already delicious vinaigrette, you can toss in some optional ingredients. Mince some parsley very fine so it blends in with the vinaigrette. The Rada French Chef is the perfect knife for mincing.

Chop nuts and roll into goat cheese

Now rough chop some pumpkin seeds (or replacement ingredient) and roll with some goat cheese. Add to your vinaigrette.

Create the salad

To create the salad, add some lettuce to your beets and carrots. Then top with the vinaigrette and garnish with some leafy greens.

Eating Healthy

While Rada Cutlery celebrates all kinds of foods, we want everyone to know that it’s easy to eat healthy and still enjoy delicious food you can make yourself. Here are some healthy options we have created on our blog previously:

Spinach Greek Style Pizza

Spinach Greek-Style Pizza only has 400 calories in a slice.

Zucchini Chips Recipes

Zucchini Chips make a savory snack and a good alternative to potato chips.

Feta & Tomato Pasta

Feta and Tomato Pasta packs the good nutrition from tomatoes with an extra kick of flavor from feta cheese.

You can eat healthy and well with Rada Cutlery. Check out the Rada Cutlery blog for healthy recipes!

Also, visit the Rada Kitchen Store to find our recipe book 400 Calorie Dinners!

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A Unique Salad with Smokey Vinaigrette

Watch this video by Chef Blake. He’ll walk you through how to make this flavorful salad and the delicate vinaigrette dressing that make all the difference.

 


Start Video Transcript:

Hey guys, it’s Blake back at the Rada Test Kitchen. I’m here to do another fun recipe with you. It’s Beet and Carrot Salad with Smokey Apple Cider Vinaigrette. Pretty interesting product here. You may not have heard of it before, but I’m going to show you how to use it and work with it.

We’re going to start with working with the beets. Using the Rada Vegetable Peeler, we’re going to peel off the top layer of this golden beet. Clean it up a little bit. Drop it into the water. We’re going to bring it up in the pan, kind of like a potato. Drop in the water and bring up the heat. In the pan we’re going to add some rice wine vinegar. That acts as a seasoning. We’re going to bring it up like a potato.

Now I have these beautiful purple carrots, kind of like baby carrots. These are a nice little attribute to our salad. Cut the tops off, discard them. Use the Vegetable Peeler again. This is a good peeler for this because it takes a nice layer off the top. This is a little easier to work with than boiling the layer off. You can use any carrot whether it’s a baby orange carrot or not. I just got my hands on these beautiful green tops. We’ll take these carrots and put them in boiling water. With a little salt. Let those cook.

Now pull those carrots out of the water, put them in an ice bath. Stop the cooking. Let those come down in temperature. I’ve taken the beet out of the boiling water and vinegar, let it cool down completely. We’re going to cut this. There’s a few ways you can cut this. Take the core off. A lot of time the coins look really nice on a plate. You can see the rings inside there. Or we can cut them into little wedges as well, those are nice and pretty too. So we’ll go ahead and do a couple different ways.

With our carrots, when they’ve cooked and come down in temperature, we’re just going to try to get the greens the same length so they’re all uniform. Put those back on the plate.

We’re going to start with the vinaigrette. I’ve got a bowl of sugar here which will be mixed with the vinegar. We’ve got apple cider vinegar here. With vinaigrette, a lot of people will do equal parts vinegar and sugar. In this one, we have a little more sugar than vinegar. Don’t add too much though because it will be too sweet. We’ve got some smoked paprika, some Worchester, minced onion, and oil. Add oil in nice and slow. Then season it with salt and pepper too. Last final ingredient to this vinaigrette is fresh parsley. What I do is ball it up and go in there for a fine mince. The Chef Knife is definitely the best knife to use for this. Add it to the vinaigrette. Nice red and green color.

We’ve got some papitas here, or pumpkin seeds. I’m going to rough chop these guys. We want a little crunch to it. If you keep them whole when you bite into it, there’s a pop, which is nice. Now we’ll take our goat cheese, plump it up a little bit. Roll it on top of the papitas.

For the plating, we’ve got some heritage spring mix here. Some nice leafy greens. Go through and kind of select the goods. This is the body to the salad. Add your carrots and golden beets. A little bit of pepper and some salt. Then our dressing. Beautiful color with that purple and yellow, greens and reds. Add some fresh garnish.

This is a pretty simple salad and pretty common but yet I put a twist on it with a smokey vinaigrette. I wouldn’t underestimate it. The dressing is really versatile. If you can’t find pumpkin seeds, you can use pine nuts. A lot of different styles. I’m excited to share this with you and I hope you enjoy it.

End of Video Transcript