Beetroot salad recipe with aronia berry dressing

With its riotous color, earthy flavor and bright berry dressing, our beetroot salad recipe will quickly become a family favorite!

With its riotous color, earthy flavor and bright berry dressing, our beetroot salad recipe will quickly become a family favorite.

If it’s good enough for Nigel…

Food writer extraordinaire Nigel Slater has a few things to say about the humble beetroot. In fact, he’s such a fan that it beat out myriad other more glamorous foods to earn a spot on his list of five star ingredients of the last twenty years.

According to Nigel, the beetroot has suddenly come back into fashion thanks to our collective discovery of how delicious it is when roasted. Now, he says, it’s everywhere: ‘I feel lucky that I like it, but sorry for those who don’t, who will find the bloody black-red globes difficult to dodge nowadays.’(1)

Not so, Nigel; there are many of us who have always treasured this odd, globular vegetable and are delighted to see it get its place in the sun!

Aside from its gloriously fuchsia color, beetroot has stolen a place in our hearts thanks to its natural sweetness. A 100g serving of beetroot provides 43 calories and is a source of fiber. However, scientists have also classified it as one of the top ten plants with the highest antioxidant activity!(2)

Developing our beetroot salad

This salad is all about crunch. From the raw beetroot to carrot and red cabbage, the veg we’ve chosen to take centre stage in our salad are textural superstars. Crisp, fresh and delightful, they practically beg to be placed in the middle of a barbecue spread or a summer picnic.

Meanwhile, we’ve added nuts and seeds to provide that all-important protein and added nutritional benefits. In our humble opinion, no salad is complete without a scattering of seeds.

Sesame seeds date back to 1600BC and some say they are the oldest condiment known to man. Not only do they taste great and add extra texture, they also contain lignans such as sesamin and sesamolin.

These are antioxidants are thought to increase the activity of vitamin E, which in turn may help prevent illnesses such as heart disease.(3)

Meanwhile, sunflower seeds are naturally prebiotic. This means that they contain a special type of fiber which we humans can’t digest; however, the ‘good’ bacteria in our gut can, and it provides them with a nourishing meal. And, when your gut microbiome is happy and healthy, it can help look after you, too.

Lately, scientific interest in the link between gut health and our overall wellbeing - and even our mental health - has exploded. Happy gut, happy life!

The dressing

In the early noughties, it became briefly fashionable to eat salad with no dressing. Thank goodness those days are over. The dressing is the soul of a salad; a drizzle of punchy flavors which turns a bowl of raw vegetables into a delicious meal.

For ours, we’ve chosen a base of classic flavors: lemon juice, for acidity, and mustard for a hint of spice.

However we wanted something a bit thicker and more satisfying than a simple vinaigrette for this salad. While many salad dressings use yoghurt or mayonnaise, here we’ve used soaked cashew nuts.

If you haven’t used soaked cashews before, you're in for a treat. Simply soak them in cold water overnight (a speedier version can be done in twenty minutes if you use boiling water). Something magical happens inside that bowl, and when you whizz the mixture up in a blender it produces a silky smooth, thick cashew cream.

This trick works a treat for so many recipes (for example, you could use it to thicken and cool hot dishes like curries). Plus, it keeps things entirely plant-based, and therefore accessible to everyone.

Now, onto the star of the show.

Aronia juice

Aronia berry, also sometimes known as chokeberry, is a little, dark purple berry which looks rather similar to a small blueberry.

However, this berry punches well above its we