Kale And Roasted Beet Salad With Feta Recipe

Do you smile or wrinkle up your nose when someone mentions beets? Beets are controversial, to say the least, with some finding them to be a sweet addition to their diets while others recoil at the vegetable's earthy taste. If you are on team beet and eat them often, you're in luck, because beets offer many health benefits and are packed with essential vitamins and minerals.

We've paired this beet salad with kale, another nutrition powerhouse. Wellness coach and recipe developer Miriam Hahn brings us this recipe and says, "I strive to eat the rainbow on a daily basis, so this salad that includes red, green, purple, and yellow covers some ground and it's also super delicious. The combination of the hearty salad ingredients, the maple roasted walnuts, and the honey mustard dressing puts this salad into restaurant-level status for sure." Grab your best chef's knife and let's create your new favorite salad.

We need a fair amount of veggies for this salad. This recipe calls for red and yellow beets, lacinato kale, a lemon, a red onion, a shallot, and an avocado. "My favorite kale to use in this salad is lacinato kale, which is also known as dino kale. I like it because it's more delicate than curly kale, but if you have trouble finding it, either type works," Hahn shares. For our maple-roasted walnuts and the dressing, make sure you have some olive oil, salt, pepper, walnuts, maple syrup, Dijon mustard, honey, red wine vinegar, and feta cheese. Hahn says, "You can use vegan feta cheese if you avoid dairy, and to make this recipe completely vegan, just substitute maple syrup for the honey in the dressing."

First things first, we need to preheat the oven to 400 F, then go ahead and peel and chop the beets. "I like to chop the beets into about 1-inch pieces. They will shrink a bit during cooking so that will give us the perfect bite-size piece in the finished salad," Hahn shares. Toss the chopped beets with 1 tablespoon of oil and ¼ teaspoon of salt. Bake them for 30 minutes or until they are tender.

After the kale has been washed, strip the leaves from the stems and discard the stems. We only want the leaves in our salad. Trim the kale into thin slivers and add it to a large bowl. Squeeze in the lemon and sprinkle in ¼ teaspoon of salt, and massage the kale for about three minutes to make it softer and easier to eat. "I eat a lot of kale salads and love this massaging technique. It has helped me convert lots of kale haters into kale lovers because it tastes so much better this way," Hahn shares. Slice the red onion and dice the shallot.

To give our salad some crunch, we'll be making some simple maple-roasted walnuts. Toss the walnuts with maple syrup, 1 teaspoon of olive oil, and ¼ teaspoon of salt. Lay them out on a baking tray and put them into the oven for 10 minutes. Then remove them from the oven and let them cool. Combined with the syrup, the walnuts should provide a nice caramelized sweet but crunchy element to your salad. 

Now we'll whip up the dressing while the items in the oven are finishing up. In a small bowl combine the diced shallot, 3 tablespoons of oil, 1 teaspoon salt, honey, red wine vinegar, and pepper. Now add the beets, walnuts, red onions, and dressing to the bowl with the kale. Toss and top with the feta cheese and sliced avocado. This salad pairs well with anything from grilled chicken, to pasta, to sandwiches. "It's best eaten same day but will be fine for leftovers if eaten the next day," Hahn shares. Hopefully, you are now on team beets.