Arugula Beet Salad (Best Flavor!)

This Arugula and Beet Salad is the perfect easy side dish! It features vibrant beets, toasted walnuts and a zesty citrus vinaigrette.

Here’s an idea for a delicious and versatile green salad: Arugula Beet Salad! It features jewel-toned roasted beets with baby arugula, all coated in a zesty citrus vinaigrette. Add thinly sliced ​​shallots and toasted walnuts, and it tastes sophisticated with minimal effort. Hush: here’s our secret! Alex and I made it with those pre-cooked turnips that you can find in many stores these days. We usually roast our own… but this saved us a ton of time. Either way: This salad belongs in your side dish repertoire!

An even simpler arugula salad? Try the easy arugula salad.

What’s in this Arugula and Beet Salad?

This beet salad with arugula recipe is an exercise in essentialism. What should not be missing in a beet salad and what can you simply do without? Alex and I played around with a few variables for this salad and found some classic flavor combinations that taste like this unbelievable. Beetroot, citrus and nuts are a classic combination: but they taste better than expected every time. It’s plant-based (WFPB) so it doesn’t even need cheese. What’s in this salad recipe:

• beets: Tender and vibrant turnips steal the show! Check out the different ways to prepare them below.
• Rocket: Baby is a must! It’s feather light and tender, the perfect salad base.
• citrus dressing: This citrus dressing is made with orange and lemon for double the zest.
• Roasted Walnuts & Chopped Shallots: Nuts provide protein and crunch! The shallots bring a salty note.
• Orange peel: The icing on the cake, it adds an extra flavor and visual element.

Ways to cook beets (and an easy shortcut!)

Here’s the thing: Alex and I are beet purists. We love buying and roasting fresh beets, especially from the farmers market! But over the past few years, we’ve found that packaged pre-cooked beets are pretty easy to find at our local grocery store. Save 1 hour roasting time? Yes, please! If you can’t find pre-cooked beets, it’s always a good idea to make your beets ahead of time and store them in the fridge until ready to serve. How to prepare your turnips:

• Packed pre-cooked (0 minutes!): Pre-cooked packaged beets make this salad a breeze! If you can find them at your local grocery store, it’s worth picking up a pack.
• Instant Pot Beets (25 minutes): The second fastest way to cook beets is in your Instant Pot! Go to Instant Pot Beets.
• Oven-Roasted Beets (1 hour): The classic way to prepare beets is to bake them in the oven! Fry them ahead of time and refrigerate them for easier prep. Go for oven roasted beets.

The baby arugula is a must!

Use baby arugula for this beet salad. Don’t even think about standard arugula! How to tell the difference:

• Rocket: Baby arugula is tender, with a mild flavor and chewy texture. It is usually sold in bags or boxes. Make sure it looks like the arugula in the photo.
• standard rocket: Standard is much larger and usually sold in bundles. It has a much stronger peppery flavor and sometimes the stalks are tougher. It’s not as good for a salad like this: but it would be sauteed well.

You can find baby arugula at many major grocery stores here in the United States! It is also available at farmers markets. The general rule is: stay away from group sales. Do you have leftovers? Try the arugula pesto.

A citrus vinaigrette you’ll want to put on everything

This Zesty Citrus Dressing hits the spot! It contains fresh lemon juice, orange juice and orange zest and is perfectly balanced. Alex and I originally made it for this Orange Fennel Salad, and it’s so refreshing we want to use it on everything! Here are some useful tools for working with citrus:

• Use a juicer for the juice. A citrus press is useful for citrus fruits to squeeze them out quickly and keep the seeds out. (Every time we try it with our hands, we get seeds in everything we make!) We use juicers works very well.
• A micro plane or a grater. A micro plane does a quick job of zeal. If you don’t have one, use a grater. Smaller zesters that look more like staff tools don’t work as well here. Learn more about how to peel an orange.

Want more dressings? Try our How to Make Healthy Salad Dressing.

Ways to serve this arugula and beet salad

This beetroot salad with rocket goes well with Italian recipes, Mediterranean dishes or as a side dish in soups. It’s a great fall and winter salad, so it would work for holidays like Thanksgiving or Christmas. But you can serve it anytime! Here are some dishes we would pair with it:

1. Salmon. Try salmon with lemon dill or baked salmon with capers.
2. Pasta. Try it with roasted eggplant pasta, baked rigatoni, the best vegan lasagne or creamy cavatappis.
3. Pizza. Try it with healthy pizza, mushroom pizza or truffle pizza.
4. Soup. Pair it with wild rice soup, wild rice and mushroom soup, pasta e ceci (Italian chickpea soup), or broccoli and potato soup.
5. Vegan. This is a vegan salad that goes well with vegan shepherd’s pie or vegan pâté.

This Arugula Beet Salad Recipe is…

Vegetarian, vegan, plant-based, dairy-free and gluten-free.