It’s no secret that I didn’t always have the passion for cooking I have now. When I was a teenager it felt more like a chore because I was helping out at home after school instead of hanging out with friends. Once I moved from Albania to US, then cooking became just something I had to do so I could keep myself healthy for my studies and my job. Occasionally the potlucks in college gave me that spark of this is so cool, but it died out buried by exams and late night studies. However, throughout all these years I made amazing salads! I wish I kept records of everything I put together. I never made salads with a recipe. It was mostly, let’s see what’s in the refrigerator and what goes with what. That’s how this Beets, Sweet Potatoes and Walnuts Salad was born.
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Health Benefits of Salads
I feel that salads are the perfect way to achieve your intake of vegetables for the day. Combinations of different veggies will ensure that you get a variety of vitamins, minerals and nutrients.
Serving different salads to kids will expose them to a lot of vegetables. Many kids nowadays don’t know know what beets, leeks, or okra are. I love offering different choices, even if my kids don’t eat beets the first time, they will pick over the sweet potato or the other way around.
Salads are a perfect source of dietary fiber. Fiber helps with weight control as well as reduction of bad cholesterol. That’s one of my favorite benefits. Just last week I took a trip to see family for a health emergency and ate lots of delicious, comfort food but I missed my salads.
You can adapt salads to your way of eating. Salads can be perfect for both vegans, vegetarians, carnivores or people on keto or any other diet. You can add chickpeas or beans to your veggies for more protein. Or you can do just olive oil/lemon juice dressing if you are on keto and avoiding carbs. There are so many options to satisfy anyone.
Above all you are eating fresh vegetables and fruits. You are teaching your kids to eat healthy and to train their taste buds to eat different textured and flavored food.
How To Make A Salad & Incorporate Into Meal Planning
As a food blogger, this is counterproductive of me to say. But don’t worry so much about recipes when you put a salad together. Get ideas from Pinterest or your favorite restaurant, but don’t let yourself not prepare your favorite salad because you are missing an ingredient or two from the list.
Think of lettuce, arugula, spring mix and spinach as interchangeable. I know, I know certain vegetables taste better with spinach and others with arugula. But that shouldn’t hold you back from preparing your favorite salad.
Add lots of chopped vegetables. Tomatoes, cucumbers, green onions, onions, celery, bell peppers should always be in your shopping list.
Add extras like broccoli, carrots, brussel sprouts, beets, sweet potatoes, cabbage etc. Add fruits in salads if you like a salty/sweet combinations i.e. oranges, strawberries, applies, pears, blueberries etc.
If you like a bit of crunch in your salads think of nuts (walnuts, pecans, almonds) and raw radishes.
Add protein, either plant or animal form. My favorite is roasted chicken but there are so many more options.
I love cheese in my salads, mostly feta cheese…hello, i’m Albanian!! As most people from Mediterranean countries, we like feta cheese in everything. My husband jokes and says I’ll have it with coffee one day:))). But cheeses like feta cheese, goat cheese, blue cheese, burrata etc are very popular choices in salads around the world.
All these choices make for a compounded amount of salads you can create a home. A simple dressing made with olive oil/vinegar or olive oil/lemon juice would be perfect for most salads.
If you live in a mostly warm/hot climate like I do (Florida), salads will become staples in your meal planning. I don’t always have the time to shop according to my meal plan, but I buy a lot of vegetables, cheeses and some meat/poultry and occasional rotisserie chicken. Follow the guide above to ix and match salads with what is already in you refrigerator.
Beets Sweet Potatoes and Walnuts Salad Notes
So basically the way I put this salad together was by checking what I had in the refrigerator few days ago. I had 3 beets and 2 sweet potatoes. I made a bed of chopped lettuce. After roasting beets and sweet potatoes separately until I could pierce them with a fork, I let them cool down. I cut beets and sweet potatoes in cubic shapes and placed over lettuce. Then added walnuts and green onions. Finally I sprinkled with salt and poured olive oil and balsamic vinegar over the vegetables. I didn’t toss so it could look pretty on the table, but tossed right before serving. My kids loved the big chunks of beets and sweet potatoes because they always prefer to eat by hand then use a fork.’
- You can roast or boil the beets and sweet potatoes, I do both. Roasted beets and sweet potatoes don’t get as soft as the boiled ones.
- I prefer a simple dressing with olive oil and balsamic vinegar in this case. Both beets and sweet potatoes have carbs and taste to spare, so no need to smother them too much with dressing.
- I used romaine lettuce for this salad, but you use spinach or arugula as well.
- This salad is a winner during Thanksgiving. My guests love the vibrant, Fall colors of beets and sweet potatoes. Plus the recipe compliments very well my other menu items.
Beets, Sweet Potatoes and Walnuts Salad
Ingredients
- 3 small beets
- 2 medium sweet potatoes
- 1 romaine lettuce head
- 3 green onions
- 0.5 cup walnuts halves
- 4 tbsps olive oil
- 2 tbsps balsamic vinegar
- salt to taste
Instructions
- Roast beets and sweet potatoes together in same baking dish for about 45 minutes in 400 F or until you can pierce easily with fork.
- If you are going to boil the Beets and Sweet Potatoes – Boil beets and sweet potatoes separately for about 25 minutes in high temperature until you can pierce them with a fork. Beets will stain the sweet potatoes if boiled together.
- Once done, turn heat off, rinse the beets and sweet potatoes and let them cool for about 30 minutes.
- Chop lettuce and arrange as desired in a deep salad bowl or flat salad platter (as the one in the picture).
- Peel beets and cut in desired shapes, same with sweet potatoes. Place them over lettuce. Try to alternate to maximize the color effect.
- Add chopped green onions and walnuts. Let the guests add salt, oil and balsamic vinegar to their serving or you can do it yourself and toss the the salad before serving. Either way it’s perfectly fine:). Enjoy!!
Notes
- You can roast or boil sweet potatoes and beets, your choice.
Nutrition Label
Nutrition
Other Salad Recipes
If you liked this Beets, Sweet Potatoes and Walnuts Salad, please pin the below image to Pinterest so you can easily find it later. For additional salad recipes, see the links below. Thank you!!
- Red Orange and Cabbage Salad
- Potatoes, Avocado and Dill Salad
- Orange Salad with Arugula
- Dragonfruit, Pear and Spinach Salad
- Fig, Goat Cheese and Pecan Salad
Nisha
Colorful, healthy and delicious salad!
Lathiya
The salad indeed looks healthy and delicious. It is so colorful and vibrant.
Angela Greven | Mean Green Chef
Such a gorgeous Fall salad, love the addition of walnuts too for added texture! Pinned, thanks so much for sharing 🙂
Beth
How beautiful the colors of the beets and sweet potatoes are together. I always love how walnuts add such great texture to a salad like this. And you’ve chosen a simple, classic dressing – fabulous.
Simone
What a gorgeous looking Fall/Thanksgiving salad! Being filled with superfoods only makes it that much more enticing!
Sonila
Thank you Simone!! Yes, it’s perfect for Fall and Thanksgiving!
Jacqueline Debono
We eat a lot of salad in summer but less in Winter. However, this salad make me think of autumn colours so it would be a fabulous addition to any meal. As you say it’s always good to have a healthy dish on the table especially during the holidays!
Sonila
We do too in summer Jacqui, but trying to add more healthy choices for my kids. It’s funny how once they try chicken nuggets and french fries it’s all they want. And I don’t cut those things completely, I just want them to get exposed to more fresh choices. Hope making similar salads and food I can teach them about lots of veggies and different ways to eat them.
Patrice
This is such a beautiful and colorful salad! And healthy too. The sweet potatoes make it perfect for fall.
Sonila
Thank you so much Patrice!!
angela
What a beautiful and healthy salad – I love beets !
Tamara J
Such a beautiful and colorful salad! I’m excited to try this out during the holidays- it would be a perfect dish for our annual Christmas lunch.
yasmin
such a colorful salad and so delicious!
Kay
This looks lush, will have to give this a try!
Thank you for sharing this recipe
Sonila
Thank you Kay, I appreciate you stopping by!
Christen
I’m always looking for great new salad recipes and this one sounds like such a great combo. I love your advice about keeping your fridge stocked up with a variety of veggies and mixing it up too…you are so right that missing one ingredient shouldn’t hold you back from making your favorite salad!
Sonila
Aww thank you:)). I remember when I wrote that post that I had a conversation with a high school student who was asking me about how to make a salad so I incorporated some of my tips on the post. Maybe if I think a bit more about it, I can write a separate post. I make so many salads, very few make it on the blog because I don’t write down what I mixed than I forget the quantities:)
Erika
This salad is so beautiful and colorful. I can see this making a wonderful Thanksgiving side dish.
Sonila
Yes, it would be perfect. I usually cook healthy, but for Thanksgiving I don’t spare butter, sugar and other ingredients lol. Having this salad on the table makes me feel better about all that food…Hey, look, I made something healthy too:))
Shirley
This looks likes the most awesome salad ever! I’m going to make it for our family Thanksgiving get-together!
Sonila
Hope you enjoy it Shirley:)). I go a bit plain on dressing compared to most people, but feel free to get more creative. Also, not sure I mentioned it on the post, but you can roast or boil the beets and sweet potatoes. There are ups and downs for both methods. Boiling is faster than roasting, but beets and sweet potatoes have to be boiled in separate pots. If you are roasting them, you can do it in same baking dish (they won’t stain each other when roasting) but it takes longer time wise. Thanksgiving tip: use toaster oven so you don’t use precious time on regular oven and if you are making sweet potato casserole as well, consider overlapping roasting of the sweet potatoes.