Golden Beet Salad with feta cheese, caramelized onions, and a sweet and salty balsamic miso dressing. Perfect weekend or holiday salad.
This salad is an amazing stand alone meal, but if you're always searching for happiness like me, it goes well with the most perfect Soft Fluffy French Bread. It's a veggie rainbow of color, just like my Spring Roll Salad!
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Golden Beet Salad
THIS SALAD. I've always been a little obsessed with beets. Steamed, with butter and salt, roasted, or pickled. Caramelized onions had to make an appearance. Spiralized rainbow carrots, of course. Feta cheese? Definitely. AND MISO. My children. I will explain all about the miso. But first, the caramelized onions.
I use 2 onions for this recipe, because they reduce down quite a bit as they cook. It takes 20-30 minutes to caramelize them depending on how dark you want them.
Begin by cooking thinly sliced onions over medium heat with 3-4 Tablespoons of olive oil or butter and ½ teaspoon of salt to bring the moisture out of the onions, and stirring every 2-3 minutes. In picture number two, you can see a few little brown onions coming out to play.
In number three, most of the onions are a lovely golden color. Many people stop here. But not me my friends. I like to cook a little darker, more like picture four. The thinnest onions can get a little darker than the rest, and this is fine.
By this point I'm stirring every minute or two so that they don't burn. Sometimes there is a dark residue on the bottom of the pan from the onion mixed with oil or butter. This is fine, I use a wooden spatula or spoon to stir it back into the onions.
Miso Dressing
The balsamic miso dressing is another star in this lovely gold beet salad. I use organic mellow white miso, which can be found at Whole Foods Markets in the United States or found online, places like Amazon.
What is Miso?
A salty paste made from fermented soybeans and barley or rice malt and koji, the mold it is cultured with. It's a widely used staple in Japanese cooking, and I have begun to use it in EVERYTHING. It can be used to make delicious compound butters, meat or veggie marinades, added to soups, dipping sauces, or in this case, a delicious miso salad dressing.
The lovely thing about this salad is that it could be considered a less traditional Easter/Spring or Fall salad. Look at those colors! So beautiful.
Don't be afraid to mix a little miso in with the caramelized onions at the end of cooking, or with the beets before they go into the salad. Red beets also make a nice addition.
Other salad recipes to try:
Yes there is a jello salad in this list. It's me, after all. But it's salad and it's unique.
📝 Printable Recipe
Golden Beet Salad with Balsamic Miso Dressing
Equipment
- large serving bowl
- medium cooking pot
- medium frying pan
Ingredients
- 2 lbs golden beets, (approx. 2 large or 3-4 smaller beets)
- 1 medium yellow onion, sliced thinly
- ¼ cup salted butter
- ½ teaspoon salt
- 8 cups Leafy green salad blend
- ½ cup finely shredded purple cabbage
- ½ cup grated carrot
- ½ cup feta cheese, crumbled
For the dressing:
- ½ cup olive oil
- ½ cup balsamic vinegar
- 2 Tablespoons mellow white miso
- 2 Tablespoons brown sugar or honey
- 1 teaspoon ground ginger
Instructions
For the beets:
- Wash beets well and slice in half or quarters to make 1-2 inches thick. Place in medium sized cooking pot with 2 inches of water, or enough to just cover the beets. Boil for 20-25 minutes or until al dente, soft but slightly firm to the bite. Drain and let cool. While beets are cooking prepare the caramelized onions.
For the caramelized onions:
- In a large cast iron or heavy bottomed frying pan, heat butter and onions over low/medium heat. Sprinkle salt over onions. Cook onions for 15-18 minutes until they begin to turn dark yellow/light brown, stirring every 2-3 minutes to prevent burning, lowering heat if necessary. Don't walk away from these, stir every 1-2 minutes the last 5 minutes of cooking as they can burn quickly.Cool completely.
For the balsamic miso dressing:
- In a small mixing bowl combine olive oil, balsamic vinegar, miso, sugar, and ground ginger and mix well. Transfer to serving container such as a glass jar or pour directly over salad if serving immediately.
Assemble the salad:
- In a large serving bowl, layer the leafy green salad mix with cabbage, grated carrot, and feta cheese on top with the cooled caramelized onions.
- Carefully peel cooked and cooled beets and slice thinly, then gently mix into salad.
- Drizzle with balsamic miso dressing if serving immediately or serve with dressing on the side.
Tina says
Your recipe does not say the quantity of onions
Sara says
Fixed! Thank you for bringing it to my attention. Sometimes when I type up the recipe I miss details from my written notes.
Amanda says
I think miso is one of the most underrated un-talked about ingredients. Beets are great and everything, who doesn't love a nice juicy beet every now and then fresh from the beet corral. But what really sells this is the Miso. I plan on naming one of my future kids miso. I might even get a tattoo of it on my right buttcheek. That's my favorite buttcheek so that's saying a lot.
Sara says
I died. I died today laughing. Thank you Amanda, I look forward to hearing this story at Miso's wedding one day.