Beet & Blue Cheese Salad

This beet and blue cheese salad is a masterpiece of flavors, starring tender beets, crunchy pistachios, edamame, and blue cheese crumbles.

Everybody loves a good transformation story. Hence, the popularity of all those makeover and home reno shows and the old “rags to riches” novel and movie plot.  There’s just something about taking something rough and making it beautiful that’s enticing. Alex and I are learning that firsthand with our new home, and, well: with this beet and blue cheese salad! Keep reading for the recipe.

We’re currently renovating a house built in 1926, and man is it a project! We’ve just spent the day painstakingly going over the old wood floors pulling out staples and nails. The upper floors had carpet when we bought the place, and we decided to rip out the carpet and give a go at refinishing the original floors. It’s a little scary, but exhilarating. The new floors are rough and creaky, but Alex assures me that with a little bit of love, we’ll transform them.

How to make beet blue cheese salad

Incidentally, same is true with this beet & blue cheese salad. The rough and humble beet, with a little bit of love, morphs into something truly amazing. We can say “amazing” since the idea comes to us from one of our favorite restaurants here in town, Napolese, which features pizza and delicious seasonal salads.

Here, we’ve adapted a concept for a beet blue cheese salad that we ate at the restaurant. It features tender roasted beets, bright green edamame, and carrots. The original salad featured microgreens, but here we’ve used the beet greens instead! We cut off the tops of the beets and sliced the greens into thin slices. (Another way to use them: this best recipe for beet greens!)

Instead of a vinaigrette dressing that you might expect from a beet blue cheese salad, this one goes uber simple: just olive oil and kosher salt! The thin coating of olive oil and salt brings out the natural flavors in each ingredient. Then top with salty feta cheese crumbles and crunchy pistachios, and it’s an incredible salad full of varied textures, flavors and colors. It takes a little time to roast the beets and prepare the vegetables, but you won’t be disappointed — it’s that good.

How to cook beets

How to cook beets? We like to roast beets, which is what we’ve called for in this beet blue cheese salad recipe. Simply wrap the beets in foil and roast them for about 50 to 60 minutes in a 400 degree oven. Then, remove them from the oven, allow them to cool, and slip off the skins. Here we used both standard beets and golden beets, to give a little variation in color. You also can cook beets in an Instant Pot or boil them.

Many stores now carry vacuum packed cooked beets! Using this type of beet would drastically cut down on the cook time for this beet salad. (We would not recommend using canned beets for this beet & blue cheese salad recipe.) If you use precooked beets, use thinly sliced spinach or chard instead of beet greens. Also if desired, you could serve this salad as a more traditional salad with salad greens on the bottom and the beets and other vegetables on the top.

Looking for more salad recipes?

Outside of this beet and blue cheese salad recipe, here are a few more salad recipes you might enjoy:

• Beet Salad with Balsamic Dressing
• Strawberry Salad with Balsamic Vinaigrette
• Shaved Brussels Sprout Salad with Pomegranate
• Vegan Italian Pasta Salad
• Vegetarian Cobb Salad
• Smoky Ranch Wedge Salad with Potato Chips
• Classic Greek Salad

This beet blue cheese salad is…

Vegetarian and gluten free. For vegan, plant-based and dairy-free, omit the blue cheese.

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Looking for more side dish recipes?

This beet & blue cheese salad is a delicious healthy side dish recipe; here are a few more side dish recipes on A Couple Cooks:

• Perfectly Creamy Polenta Recipe
• Crispy Sweet Potato Fries
• Roasted Beets with Goat Cheese
• Incredible No Mayo Potato Salad
• Best Popover Recipe