A tossed salad of beet tops & bottoms

This versatile salad is perfect for summer

Probably Worth Sharing is a reader supported publication. Please consider a free or paid subscription, or share this with a friend.

Last year for for Pride month, I made my first vers vegetable recipe – carrot top pesto on roasted carrot bottoms.

This year I wanted to challenge the idea that beets are only bottoms. Beets are also a versatile vegetable – they are tops too. The entire beet plant is edible and delicious. You can use beet greens just like spinach or Swiss chard. In this recipe, the beet greens are cut into ribbons and added to grated raw beetroot. The salad is packed with herbs, a sharp sherry vinaigrette, and topped with roasted pistachios. It’s tasty, it’s fast, it keeps well. It’s family friendly with the pizazz of a Pride parade.

And it’s perfect to take to BBQs with your conservative relatives all summer long.

What Pride means to me

Pride, for me, is about learning to love and accept yourself as you are. Many of the struggles I’ve faced in my own life – around my self confidence, my self worth, and my relationships – has largely been around not accepting myself or my own values as being worthy.

I tend to accept everyone, and prioritize everyone, except me. I’m working on it!

Parents, friends, society… everyone likes to tell us who we should be, who we should love, how we should love, and how we’re allowed to exist in the world. Like the beet, there’s a part society sees and values. When you think of beets you think of beet bottoms (beetroot when you aren’t making sex jokes¹). Most beets at the store are red, most beetroot is cooked, and most beet recipes are fine.

But the entire beet plant is edible. Beet tops, known as beet greens when you aren’t making sex jokes, are edible. Not only are they edible, they are delicious and packed with nutrients. Yet most people discard them without a second thought. They aren’t seen as valuable because society doesn’t value them.

And that’s a shame, because the whole beet is worthy of love, much like you are. You can use beet greens anywhere you would use spinach or Swiss chard. They taste like beets and spinach adopted a baby. Make a salad, sauté them, add them to quiche.

This recipe has the family friendly appeal of a coleslaw with the the pizazz of a Pride parade. There is so much flavour from the beets, herbs, vinaigrette, and pistachios – but in perfect balance.

My hope with this recipe is that helps you challenge you preconceived notions of what you value about yourself and about others. Maybe there are parts of yourself you keep discarding because you think society doesn’t value them, or that being your whole self – vulnerabilities and all – makes you less appealing. (Being yourself always makes you more appealing). If you learn to value your whole self you might discover something magical happens.

Which is what happened when I decided to accept the whole beet.

This is a raw beet salad. When you’re handling beets, it’s important to practice safe salads – so glove up and PreP your beets. The beets are grated on a box grater, giving the final salad a coleslaw texture.

You chiffonade the beet tops (a fabulous way of saying cut into ribbons). You add a very large pile of mint, dill, and parsley. You make a very sharp sherry vinaigrette. For added crunch, throw some roasted pistachios on top just before serving. It sounds like a lot of flavour, and it is. It’s extremely delicious.

It’s also the perfect salad to take to BBQs with your conservative relatives all summer long, but please use rainbow beets if you are tossing salad for this purpose.

And remember that you (yes, you!) are worthy of love, just as you are.

You are enough.

This walnut bowl was made by Cassandra Book in Hamilton, Ontario

A tossed salad of beet tops and bottoms

Recipe permalink | PDF below for paid subscribers

Ingredients

Dressing

• 1/3 cup sherry vinegar

• 2 tbsp olive oil

• 1–2 tbsp dijon mustard (use less for a more neutral flavour / less bite)

• 1 tsp salad

• 1/2 tsp freshly ground black pepper

• 1 tsp sugar

Salad

• 500–600g beets, with tops (1 bunch, 3–5 beets)

• 100g parsley (~ 1/2 bunch)

• 50g mint (2 of those plastic packets)

• 50g dill (2 of those plastic packets / 1/2 bunch)

Toppings

• 15-ish pieces of mint, whole

• 1 stem of dill, torn

• 50g roasted pistachios

You can see this step-by-step in my YouTube recipe video. Make sure to wear gloves and practice safe salads!

Method

Make the dressing: Put all the ingredients for the dressing into a clean jar, cover with a lid, and shake until emulsified.

Soak the beet greens: Fill a large bowl with clean, cold water. Wear gloves and place a piece of parchment on your work surface to save on cleanup later. Cut the tops off where the stem meets the beetroot and set into the water. Give them a shake and allow them to sit in the water while you prepare the beetroot.

Peel and grate the beetroot: Peel the beets and discard the peels. Rinse the beets under cool water. Grate the beets on the coarse side of a box garter, holding the beet so you get the longest strands possible. Add the grated beet to a very large bowl.

Clean and dry the beet greens: Check that any dirt on the beet greens has been rubbed off and fallen to the bottom of the bowl. If any dirt remains, change out the water until the beet greens are clean. Place a large kitchen towel you don’t care about on your counter, lay out the beet greens out in an even layer and roll them up in the kitchen towel.² As you go through the beet greens, if any are discoloured or show signs of rot they should be discarded.

Chiffonade the beet greens: Stack the beet greens (usually 3 piles) and then tightly roll them into a spiral. Chop into 1/8” to 1/4” thick ribbons, matching the thickness of the grated beets. Chop the stems to bite size pieces. Add to your salad bowl.

Chop the herbs: Wash your herbs with the same technique as the beet greens. Remove the mint leaves from the stems³ and reserve 15 of the smallest, prettiest leaves. Reserve 1 stem of dill. Place all the remaining herbs in a large pile in your counter and chop until very fine.⁴ Add to your salad bowl.

Dress the salad: Add half the dressing to the salad bowl. Toss the salad until well combined. Taste and adjust – do you need more dressing? more salt? more pepper? Remember you can always add more, but you can’t take it away.

Save for later option: This salad keeps very well in the fridge, keeping its crisp texture. You can keep it for 5–7 days in the fridge. If you’re planning to make it in advance, put it in the fridge before adding the pistachios so they remain crispy.

Decorate the salad: Before serving top with the reserved mint and dill, and add the roasted pistachios.

1. I debated defining terms like tossing a salad here, so if you are confused by the double entendres in this post, you may want to consult Urban Dictionary at your own risk.

2. This technique for washing/drying the beet greens in a rolled towel can be used for any leafy green like Swiss chard and kale, as well as for any tender herbs. Storing them rolled up in a damp kitchen towel in the fridge will help them keep longer and they will be clean and ready to use at any point! It’s also much gentler than using a salad spinner, so your greens won’t get bruised.

3. The easiest way to quickly separate mint is to hold the top of the stem, then pinch your fingers and pull down the shaft. Most, if not all, of the leaves will come in one movement.

4. The easiest way I’ve found to chop a giant pile of herbs is to start with a rough chop to even the surface, then chop in a grid format. Chop from left-to-right, keeping your knife straight in front of you. Then rotate the knife 90-degrees and chop from top-to-bottom. Shuffle the herbs with your hands or a bench scraper and repeat. Repeat this until you have a very fine herb texture, which usually takes 3 passes for me. It’s much faster and you bruise the herbs far less than manically chopping.

PDF Recipe

Paid subscribers fund this publication, including devloping recipe development! Paid subscribers have access to PDF copies of all recipes.