Roasted Beet and Chickpea Salad

I have not always liked beets.  I think the first few times I had beets as an adult, their flavor was misrepresented as being all-together earthy and bitter.  Yes, beets can be earthy, and sometimes bitter, but they can also be subtley sweet and almost floral.  If you work with those flavors properly, you can make beets taste great.   Roasting beets is one way to bring out their sweetness, like in today’s recipe, roasted beet and chickpea salad.

Another tip to bring out the the best in beets is to toss them with quality olive oil which also has a floral flavor.  Use plenty of vinegar too, which adds brightness that will overcome some of those earthy flavors.

In this salad, the tender sweet beets, fragrant dill, and salty creamy feta create a balance of flavors and textures that make a unified, tasty salad.  The chickpeas add simple protein to make it filling.  I eat it for a simple lunch, but it would be a delicoius side as well.

Variations to the Roasted Beet and Chickpea Salad recipe:

1. Layer the salad: The red beets will bleed some of their color onto other parts of the salad if you toss it all together, therefore I like to layer the salad instead.
2. Cooking the beets:  You can cook the beets anyway you like.  I prefer roasted them but you could steam them or buy pre-cooked beets, usually found vacuumed sealed in the produce section as well.
3. Peeling the beets:  Beets do not need to be peeled, the peel is edible.  If you want to peel them, the easiest way to is roast the beets whole, let them cool, and rub the skin off under running water.  If you happen to have tough beets (left too long in the garden) then they will need peeled with a vegetable peeler.
4. Simple swaps: Use goat cheese in place of feta.  Try white wine vinegar in place of red. Go all in with some greens, or leave them out. Use shallot instead of garlic.  Finally, try an alternative herb such as chives, parsley or mint.

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