Our pumpkin lentil salad recipe with beetroot, goat cheese and pistachios is packed with texture and flavour. Butternut pumpkin and lentils are pan-fried in cumin, arranged on mixed salad leaves, topped with baby beetroots and goat’s cheese pearls, sprinkled with crunchy pistachios, pumpkin seeds, cranberries, and fresh mint, and dressed with a fig balsamic vinegar dressing.
If you’re a fan of Middle Eastern food, you’ll love this beetroot and pumpkin lentil salad recipe with goat cheese and pistachios, especially if you’ve enjoyed our other pumpkin and beetroot salad recipes, such as this beetroot arugula salad with walnuts and feta on butter bean puree, our roast beetroot salad with feta, rucola and pistachios on cumin-spiced carrot hummus, this beet carrot salad with goat cheese, arugula and radish, or pumpkin beetroot salad on whipped feta with pistachios and fresh mint.
My inspiration for this recipe are the salads of the Mediterranean and Middle East, where we lived, worked, travelled and wrote about for a decade – salads such as our Antalya style Turkish white bean salad, Arabic balela salad on soupy chickpeas, baby corn on creamy white beans, my roasted cauliflower on hummus, this eggplant salad with pomegranate, sesame and parsley on hummus, and this pearl couscous salad with pomegranate, pistachios and herbs.
And while you can easily eat this salad as a light meal on its own, it also makes a fantastic side salad to Mediterranean and Middle Eastern mains, such as Lebanese shish tawook (garlicky chicken), beef kofta kebabs, spicy potatoes, kofta meatballs, or Greek chicken souvlaki.
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Now let me tell you all about my pumpkin lentil salad with beetroot, goat’s cheese and pistachios.
Pumpkin Lentil Salad Recipe with Beetroot, Goat Cheese, Pistachios, and Poppy Seeds
My recipe for pumpkin lentil salad with beetroot, goat cheese and pistachios makes a perfect salad in my mind and it’s addictively delicious. I’ve made this salad so many times since I first created it, and every single time I make it I finish the entire salad myself. Good thing my mum is “not a salad person”! It’s a salad I struggle to share, but I’ll gladly share the recipe with you.
I don’t know about you, but I have a thing for salads with pumpkin and beetroot – roasted, pan-roasted, pan-fried, room temperature or warm. Add a white cheese such as feta, goat’s cheese, buffalo mozzarella, or bocconcini. Add texture with dried fruit and crunchy nuts, freshness with mixed salad leaves, and fragrance with fresh herbs. Drizzle with a great vinaigrette, and you have a perfect salad.
Throw some ancient grains and legumes or pulses into the mix – chickpeas, lentils, seeds, beans, peas, they all work. Take it to the next level by piling the lot onto a generous spread of creamy hummus, baba ganoush or white bean purée, and serve it with home-baked sourdough, warmed flatbreads, homemade crackers or pita crisps. That’s a truly memorable salad that you’ll want to make over and over again.
I only have a few tips to making this pumpkin lentil salad recipe with beetroot, goat cheese and pistachios, as it’s super easy and comes together quickly.
Tips to Making this Pumpkin Lentil Salad Recipe with Beetroot, Goat Cheese and Pistachios
Just a few tips to making this pumpkin lentil salad recipe with beetroot, goat cheese and pistachios as it’s super easy to make and comes together easily, so just some notes on the ingredients.
The Ingredients
As usual, don’t be put off by the long-ish ingredients list. There’s a quick dressing to make, just two key ingredients to prepare, the pumpkin and beetroot (although you could easily buy cooked baby beetroots), a can of lentils to open, and the remaining ingredients are a mix of leaves, herbs, nuts and seeds.
The Salad Dressing
Make the salad dressing first. It’s super simple, just a quality extra virgin olive oil, white wine vinegar, and a wonderful Fig Glaze with Balsamic Vinegar from Modena from Aldi. You’ll be dividing that and stirring the diced shallot into half of that. The recipe makes enough for this dish, but you could scale it up and keep leftover dressing in a mason jar or clip-top Kilner jar in the fridge.
Pumpkin
Use your favourite kind of pumpkin or squash, but I adore butternut pumpkin in this salad. It’s easy to prep: deseed it, peel it, and chop it into 2-3cm cubes. You’ll cook the pumpkin the same way it’s cooked in this sweet and savoury spiced pumpkin porridge recipe. Fry it in a pan in extra virgin olive oil and ground cumin until tender, golden and even a little charred.
Baby Beetroots
You could roast beetroots or use store-bought roasted baby beetroots, which is what I’ve done. They come cooked, peeled and vacuum-packed in 250 g packs, which are perfect for a big salad. Or use half and use the rest of the baby beets in another dish. They keep in the fridge for a few days. And of course you could use canned baby beets.
Having said that, I love roasted fresh beetroots; they’re full of so much flavour and naturally sweet. To roast beetroots, give them a scrub, loosely wrap each beet in foil, lay them on a tray, and slide them into the oven. I’ve found medium sized beets take about 45 minutes to an hour to roast on 200°C (390°F) in our oven, so baby beets should be done in half the time.
Mixed Salad Leaves and Herbs
I’ve used a mix of baby salad leaves, including rucola (roca, rocket, arugula), coral lettuce, baby chard, mizuna, baby spinach, and tatsoi. But any salad greens would do the job. Once again, I’ve used an Aldi product, a bag of The Classic Salad Leaf Mix. It’s just so convenient and so economical. It would cost at least eight to ten times as much to buy each of those greens and they’d go to waste as there are just two of us.
Fresh mint is my favourite herb for this dish, but fresh dill is also fantastic, and basil would be brilliant too!
Goat’s Cheese
As for the cheese, my pumpkin lentil salad recipe calls for goat’s cheese. I used another wonderful Aldi product called Goat Cheese Pearls, which are stuffed with a fig filling. I adore them. They’re fantastic on an antipasti plate eaten with toothpicks. But you could use spoons of soft goat’s cheese. Cubes of soft Persian feta and bocconcini also work.
Lentils, Pistachios, Dried Fruit and Seeds
Canned lentils are just fine, pistachios are perfect (quickly pan-roast them in a little extra virgin olive oil in one of these adorable little fry pans), and I used the same dried fruit and seed mix that I used for the pumpkin porridge recipe I linked to above, and that’s a combo of dried cranberries, sunflower seeds and pumpkin seeds (pepitas). I also sprinkled on some poppy seeds.
Serving the Salad
Serve this pumpkin, beetroot and lentil salad immediately. The size of this salad will easily satisfy two people as a healthy light main but easily feed 4 people if you’re serving it as a side salad or as one of an array of dishes as part of a family-style shared meal.
Pumpkin Lentil Salad Recipe with Beetroot, Goat Cheese and Pistachios
Ingredients
Dressing
- 4 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
- 2 tbsp white wine vinegar
- 2 tbsp balsamic fig glaze
Salad
- 1 purple shallot - diced, or red onion
- 4 tbsp extra virgin olive oil - divided
- 2 tsp ground cumin - divided
- 400 g butternut pumpkin - cut into 3cm pieces
- 200 g lentils - drained, canned lentils are perfect
- 2 tbsp pistachios
- 100 g mixed salad leaves
- 100 g boiled baby beetroots - cut into quarters; these usually come in 250g vacuum packs
- 50 g goats cheese pearls - or spoonfuls of goat cheese
- 2 tbsp mixed seeds - such as pumpkin seeds and sunflower seeds
- 2 tbsp dried cranberries
- ½ tsp poppy seeds
- 2 tbsp fresh mint leaves - baby leaves or tear large leaves
Instructions
- Make the salad dressing in a small jug by whisking or vigorously stirring the extra virgin olive oil, white wine vinegar and balsamic fig glaze together. Taste, and adjust to suit your palate; if you prefer a sweeter dressing add a teaspoon of honey.
- Pour half the salad dressing into a small bowl and add the diced purple shallot (or red onion), stir to combine so it’s completely coated, and set aside.
- To a lidded frying pan over medium-high, add 2 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil, heat until shimmering, add the butternut pumpkin pieces, sprinkle a tablespoon of ground cumin over the pumpkin, and leave to pan-fry for a few minutes until the pumpkin browns and even chars a little.
- Use tongs to turn the pumpkin pieces over to brown on the other side. After a few minutes, put the lid on the pan, turn the heat off, and remove the pan from the stove. After a few minutes, use the tongs to transfer the pumpkin pieces to a tray to cool.
- Clean the pan with a paper kitchen towel, or under hot water if needed. Turn the heat to medium-high, add another 2 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil, and heat until shimmering. Add the drained lentils, sprinkle on the remaining tablespoon of ground cumin, stir to combine, and heat for five minutes, stirring occasionally. Transfer to a bowl to cool and set aside.
- In a small pan over medium-high heat, toast the pistachios for a minute or two until crunchy and the colour is vibrant (if needed, add a teaspoon of extra virgin olive oil), then transfer to a small dish and set aside.
- Assemble the salad: spread the mixed salad leaves over a serving plate, sprinkle on half the lentils, arrange the pan-fried pumpkin pieces, baby beetroot quarters and goats cheese pearls (or teaspoonfuls of goat cheese), spoon over the diced purple shallots in dressing, sprinkle on the rest of the lentils, toasted pistachios, mixed seeds, dried cranberries, poppy seeds, and fresh mint leaves.
- Serve at the centre of the table with the rest of the dressing, or distribute between plates, using salad spoons to toss just before serving.
Nutrition
Please do let us know in the comments below if you make this pumpkin lentil salad recipe with beetroot, goat cheese and pistachios as we’d love to hear how it turned out for you.
