Our beet and carrot salad recipe with goat cheese, radish and arugula is a great beetroot salad for casual weekend entertaining as it comes together quickly, it’s stunning to look at, and it won’t wilt if you drizzle on the vinaigrette at the last minute. We do oven roasted beetroots but use canned beetroots if you can’t find fresh beets.
One of our best beetroot recipes, this beet carrot salad recipe makes a fabulous beetroot salad, a roasted beet salad with goat cheese, carrot, radish and arugula – or rucola, roca or rocket, if you prefer. While we can happily share a big plate of this for lunch, it’s fantastic for feeding a crowd for a relaxed gathering or laidback lunch or dinner.
If you’ve made and enjoyed our beetroot salad with feta, walnuts and rucola on butter bean purée, our roast beetroot salad recipe with feta, rucola and pistachios on cumin-spiced carrot hummus, my pumpkin beetroot salad on whipped feta with fresh mint, and pumpkin lentil salad with beetroot, goat cheese and poppy seeds, you’ll love this beet carrot salad. Incredibly delicious, it’s also super versatile.
The inspiration for these twists on a classic Med-style beetroot salad is the Middle Eastern balela salad, which is piled onto soupy chickpeas, and the Antalya version of a Turkish white bean salad, where the salad is spread over a white bean purée. Roasted cauliflower on hummus and baby corn on creamy white beans are in the same family.
But before I tell you more about this beet and carrot salad recipe with goat cheese, radish and arugula, I have a favour to ask. Grantourismo is reader-funded. If you’ve cooked our recipes and enjoyed them, please consider supporting Grantourismo. For instance, you could buy a handcrafted KROK, the best mortar and pestle ever; or buy something on Amazon, such as these cookbooks for culinary travellers, cookbooks by Australian chefs, classic cookbooks for serious cooks, and gifts for Asian food lovers and picnic lovers. Now let me tell you more about this beet and carrot salad recipe with goat cheese, radish and arugula.
Beet and Carrot Salad Recipe with Goat Cheese, Radish and Arugula
If you’re like me and you love a year-round salad that works with warming dishes in the cooler months (braised chicken, spiced meatballs, brined pork chops, and so on) and cold dishes in the hot months (cold chicken, salmon, fresh seafood, etc), you’re going to love this beet and carrot salad recipe with goat cheese, radish and arugula.
In fact, all of the beetroot salads I linked to above are fantastic throughout the year, no matter what the season. Perhaps because we think of beetroot, a root vegetable, as both an earthy autumn-winter ingredient, and a bright tangy-sweet spring-summer salad essential.
We’ve had access to beautiful fresh beetroots, which explains all the beet salad recipes. But while beetroots have a long life, if you keep them in a cold fridge – they’ll last from two weeks up to two months, depending on when they were harvested – the fresher the beetroots the sweeter the taste. Although my beetroots haven’t lost flavour, the older beetroots are definitely less sweet.
If you’re lucky to buy fresh beetroots with the deep-pink stems and leaves attached, cut them off, because they draw moisture from the beetroot, drying out the vegetable. They’re edible – they’re basically baby Swiss chard – so you can use them as you would other leafy greens.
The fresh beets I bought had tiny pretty pink and green leaves, which I cut off and kept between layers of paper kitchen towels in a small well-sealed container in the fridge cheese drawer. Don’t make the mistake of keeping them on the shelves as I did the first time. If your fridge is as cold as mine, they’ll freeze.
My plan was to scatter the baby beetroot leaves on the top of this salad – they looked so pretty the first time I tested the beet and carrot salad recipe – but in the rush of squeezing a couple of photo shoots into the one afternoon, I forgot about them… and the pistachios… and the cutlery…
Just a few tips to making this beet and carrot salad recipe with goat cheese, radish and arugula.
Tips to Making This Beet and Carrot Salad Recipe with Goat Cheese, Radish and Arugula
I only have a few tips to making this beet and carrot salad recipe with goat cheese, radish and arugula as it’s super easy. I recommend roasting fresh beetroots, but if you can’t source them, by all means use canned baby beets.
But if you can find fresh beetroots, roasted beetroots taste so good and naturally sweet, and they’re a cinch to roast. To oven-roast beets: scrub the beetroots well, loosely wrap each beet individually in foil, pop them on a tray, and slide it into the oven.
This recipe only calls for one whole beetroot, but I’ll often roast a few beetroots at the same time, as they’ll last a few days in the fridge in a well-sealed container. You can also freeze roasted beetroots.
The smaller the beets the quicker they’ll roast. In my experience, a small beetroot roasted alone on 200°C (390°F) can take 30-40 minutes. Roasting 3-4 larger beetroots can take from 40 minutes to one hour or even a little longer if I’m also roasting other vegetables at the same time.
Use a vegetable peeler to peel both the beetroot and the carrot. Terence prefers shorter carrot peels for convenience, but I think the longer wide carrot peels look more striking. I finely slice the radish with a sharp knife, but you could also use a mandoline slicer.
This beet and carrot salad recipe calls for arugula, but I also use mustard leaves, as I did the day we photographed the dish. I love a soft goat cheese, but you could also use one of those salty, soft, white Danish cheese. I tend to crumble the cheese over the salad.
I’ve indicated the nuts are optional, but I do love pistachios with this salad, which I quickly pan-roast in a small dry pan for a minute (no more; and less is probably better), which makes them super crunchy. I use this cute little non-stick frying pan, which we use for dry-roasting small portions of spices and frying eggs.
Just before serving, I dress the salad with a couple of tablespoons of our vinaigrette, which I make a big jar of every couple of weeks and keep in a mason jar or clip-top Kilner jar.
Serve the salad straight away. It’s perfect for two people for a light lunch, but can easily feed 4-6 people if you’re serving this beet carrot salad as one of numerous dishes as part of a family-style sharing meal.
Beet and Carrot Salad Recipe with Goat Cheese, Radish and Arugula
Ingredients
- 120 g beetroot - scrubbed, trimmed (about one beetroot)
- 140 g carrot - peeled, trimmed
- 3 small radishes - trimmed, shaved into thin slices
- 100 g arugula and mustard leaves
- 80 g goat cheese - or another soft white cheese
- 1 tbsp pistachios - or walnuts or almonds, pan-roasted in a small dry pan
- 2 tbsp vinaigrette - see recipe
- 1 pinch salt
Instructions
- Pre-heat your oven to 200°C (390°F).
- Loosely wrap the beetroot in foil and roast on a tray in the oven until soft, around 30 minutes or so; it will be ready when a skewer or fork easily slides into the beetroot.
- Carefully remove the foil, allow the beetroot to cool. Use a vegetable peeler to peel off and discard tough pieces of skin, then shave the beetroot into thin slices.
- While the beetroot is roasting and cooling, prep the rest of the ingredients: use a vegetable peeler to shave the carrot into thin long strips; cut the radish into thin slices; wash and dry the arugula and mustard leaves; and cut the goat cheese or another soft white cheese into small chunky pieces.
- Assemble the salad: lay down half the arugula and mustard leaves on the salad plate, arrange the carrot strips next, lay the beet slices and radish slices next, sprinkle on the goat cheese (or another soft or salty white cheese), scatter the pistachios (or walnuts or almonds) over the salad.
- Drizzle the vinaigrette over the salad, sprinkle on a pinch of salt, and serve immediately with extra dressing and ground black pepper.
Nutrition
Please do let us know in the comments below if you make this beet and carrot salad recipe with goat cheese, radish and arugula as we’d love to hear how it turned out for you.
This was a big hit in our house, healthy and packed with flavour, we all loved it, thank you.
Hi Helen, so pleased to hear that! Thanks for letting us know :)
I made this salad to eat with your sausage pasta and it was so so good! The gang loved it. We always roast beetroots. You got me addicted to that. No turning back now.
Hi Elka, so pleased to hear this – and happy to hear you like the home-roasted beetroots. They’re my preference too. Thanks for dropping by :)