The Best Pickled Beet Salad Recipe (with Goat Cheese & Maple Roasted Pecans)

This pickled beet salad recipe with goat cheese salad recipe is simple and addictive!  With greens, pickled beets, goat cheese, homemade maple pecans and a simple balsamic dressing, you will seriously impress your family and friends with this beet salad’s delicious and unique flavor and good looks.

Every second fall for the last few years, Debbie and I have made amazing pickled beets.  Not to brag or anything, but they are the best I have tasted.

What?!  They are!

We boil them, peel them and then process them with spices.  Neither of us like the job of peeling, but at least the one who gets stuck peeling the dang things gets their drinks made for them…

But then…  What the heck do you do with 20 jars of pickled beets?!  Besides just eating them straight from the jar, this pickled beet salad recipe is one of our favorite ways to eat them!

Ingredients in the Salad

This is the way we eat our pickled beet and goat cheese salad, but you could also change it up a bit if you have slightly different ingredients in your fridge.

• greens: any kind of mixed greens or  lettuce works here.  Spinach, kale, green leaf lettuce or butter lettuce.  You could use romaine, but in our opinion, its not the best in this salad.
• cheese: you don’t need to use chévre goat cheese in this or any beet salad, but its the best.  You could make this beet salad recipe with feta or any other type of goat cheese, but it really should be something sorta soft and crumbly.
• nuts: almost every beet salad  you see has some sort of nut in in it, usually walnuts or pecans.  We like pecans and especially maple roasted pecans. They are so dang good and we highly recommend using them in this beet salad.
• alternative to nuts: if you are allergic or can’t eat or don’t like nuts, try pumpkin seeds.  You can even candy them like our pecans if you like.  Or add both nuts and pumpkin seeds 🙂
• beets!: you need pickled beets for a pickled beet salad, however, you could also use roasted beets or even just steamed beets for this salad too.  But the pickled beets are amazing in this salad.
• dressing: our dressing for this beet salad so simple.  Olive oil and vinegar and a couple spoons of the pickled beet juice.  Then salt and pepper.  That’s it.  Super easy.
• what else could you add: grated carrots, edemame, herbs like thyme, basil or dill, anything else you would want to add?   We usually like to keep this salad pretty simple, but it’s always up to whoever is making it!

How to Make Pickled Beets

There are a couple ways.  You can make them yourself like Debbie and I usually do.  It’s fun and easy to do.  Here is a good recipe for that.

You can also make quick pickled beets!  Just pickle them as you cook them.  I haven’t tried this, but in theory it sounds good if you don’t have a jar of pickled beets on hand.  Here is a recipe for that.

Or… you can just buy them 🙂  However, I have yet to taste a store bought pickled beet that can hold a candle to homemade.  But, here is a link to some pickled beets that look pretty good.

How to Make the Dressing

And the dressing is as simple as drizzling olive oil and balsamic vinegar over top of the salad and finishing with salt.

Seriously, that’s it!  The juices from the pickled beets mingle with the olive oil and balsamic vinegar and helps to dress the greens in a tangy sweet dressing.   Honestly, its soooooo good!

Serving the Salad

We love this pickled beet salad recipe for entertaining because its beautiful, its unique, and it only take a few mins to throw together.

Serve this beet salad as small individual starter salads to be a little more fancy, or make a big salad and serve it family style as part of the main meal.  Your girlfriends will especially love it, but I’ve even given a plate of this salad to my husband for dinner and he gobbled it up.  We always get rave reviews!

That said, I often make this salad just for myself as a quick dinner when I’m home alone.

Can you eat raw beets in a salad?

You could.  And I have seen lots of raw beet salads, but we tend to not eat raw beets.  If  you want to, I would grate them so they are small.  Then they might be sweet and crunchy.  If they are too big, they might be hard to eat cuz they can be quite hard.

I prefer beets to be pickled, roasted, or steamed.   In salads or otherwise.

Do you have to cook beets?

Not necessarily, but they get much sweeter and softer when you cook them.  They can taste pretty earthy if they are not cooked.

Are beets healthier raw or cooked?

They have more nutrients raw.  To retain as much nutrients as possible when you cook beets, roast them, saute them, or boil them in their skin for only as long as they require, no longer.  Don’t boil them without their skins or the nutrients will leach into the water.

What to Serve with This Salad

Here are some options you might like to serve with this beet salad to complete your meal:

• flank steak with chimichuri – a cheaper way to serve steak to guests
• pan fried salmon – so easy and our favorite way to eat salmon
• pan fried halibut – we love pan fried fish, its so easy!
• potatoes with dill and garlic – so good!
• salad and sangria always go good together, especially when entertaining!  Try one of these Sangria’s with your meal.

Other Salad Recipes You Might Like

• taco salad recipe with tequila lime chicken & homemade ranch (that actually tastes like ranch) 
• grilled caesar salad with homemade caesar dressing
• warm spinach salad with bacon dressing

Kick Ass Homemade Salad Toppings

• maple roasted pecans – simply THE BEST
• homemade croutons – so easy & good that you will never want to buy them again

If you’ve tried this pickled beet salad recipe then don’t forget to rate the recipe and let us know how it turned out in the comments below.  We love hearing from you!

We love to see your creations!  Tag @Cookswithcocktails if you post a picture of this recipe on INSTAGRAM