With summer quickly approaching and the heat rising outside, we often recommend adding cool and colorful salads to restaurant menus to brighten things up for the season. Here’s a great, healthy summer salad recipe you can add to your menu this month.
To start, I love beets for everything, but especially in a summery salad like this. Golden beets are great because they don’t turn everything pink, and they are just as delicious. Then, I always want beets with blue cheese – it’s so earthy and sweet and savory all together. Lastly, I like to make my own ranch dressing with Greek yogurt. It’s awesome because you get the healthfulness of the Greek yogurt and the ranch flavor that everybody loves. This is the recipe I use to put together my summery beet and blue cheese salad:
Ingredients:
- a large bunch of arugula
- 6 medium golden beets
- 1/2 cup walnuts
- 1/2 cup blue cheese, crumbled
- 1/2 cup plain Greek yogurt
- 2 tbsp red wine vinegar
- 1 packet of ranch dressing seasoning
- 1 tsp olive oil
- pinch of kosher salt
Instructions:
- Trim the beets and put them in a pot of water. Bring to a boil and cook for 20-25 minutes until they are soft all of the way through. Drain and cool.
- Wash and dry the arugula.
- Toast the walnuts in a 350F oven for 6 minutes.
- Make the dressing by stirring together the yogurt, half of the blue cheese, the vinegar, and ranch seasoning. This will make a little more than you need for the salad, you can eat the rest with some veggies, or chicken wings, or on a turkey and bacon sandwich.
- Rub the skins off of the beets and dice into small pieces.
- Toss the arugula with 2 tbsp of the blue cheese ranch dressing.
- Toss the beets with the olive oil, walnuts, a pinch of salt, and the remaining blue cheese.
- Pile the beets on top of the dressed arugula and serve.
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