Easy Beet Salad

There are a few canned products that I love, and that can definitely save some time in the kitchen when necessary. For once I won’t mention canned beans, but instead, canned beets! You can also find them jarred. And they’re good.

If you prefer to cook your own beets, that’s fine. But in the case of this salad, I just want to show you how easy it is to create a pretty, delicious, and really fast salad – no cooking involved!

It took me a while to learn to love beets. They tasted like dirt to me initially, but I now embrace that earthiness. And a beet salad, especially with feta added, is to die for in my book.

If you noticed the photos, you can see that I used a spiralizer on the whole beets, and of course the curly cues don’t enhance the flavor of the salad. To really make this a quick salad, just some bite-size cubing of the canned beets would work perfectly. I was just trying to make the salad a little prettier!

Easy Beet Salad

1 – 16 ounce can whole beets, to make two salads
Vinegar, I used champagne vinegar
Olive oil
Crumbled feta
Chopped parsley, optional

Drain the beets, saving all of the beet liquid* from the can. Then let them dry on paper towels.

Chop or spiralize the beets and set aside. Pour some vinegar and olive oil in a medium-sized bowl, then add the beets and toss them gently.

Place in serving dishes and sprinkle with feta and parsley, if using. Black pepper would also be good, but not salt, because the feta is salty.

Chives are another possibility instead of the parsley.

* If you love the flavor of beets, use the leftover beet juice to make a vinaigrette. I made one for the blog in the fall – a beet apple vinaigrette. Today I reduced the beet juice along with some cherry juice, then after it cooled down, added some vinegar, olive oil, and a pinch of salt. Beet juice makes a fabulous-tasting vinaigrette!

note: I’ve obviously never had canned whole beets before; I typically buy them sliced. So I was a bit shocked when I discovered how small they were in the can. As a result, they were not easy to spiralize. I suggest that if you want pretty, spiralized beets, buy them raw, cook them, then spiralize them. Larger beets just work better in a spiralizer.