Roasted Beet Salad Recipe with Goat Cheese

This roasted beet salad with goat cheese is easily one of our favorite beet recipes. The combination of tender roasted beets and our citrus dressing is incredible!

Every time we make this salad, we both say we should make more of it! It really is so delicious and truly one of our favorite uses for beets. If you are looking for a go-to beet salad recipe, this is it. This salad starts with roasting beets, but we’ve also added the option to buy prepackaged cooked beets, which you can easily swap in instead of roasting the beets yourself.

The citrusy dressing is so good with beets. Think orange, lemon, a little vinegar, and olive oil. It’s absolutely perfect. Then, we add creamy goat cheese and toasted walnuts for lots of texture. If that wasn’t enough, this salad sits well in the fridge. In fact, we think the beets get better and better (all thanks to that incredible dressing). If you are like us and love beets, but don’t actually use them enough, this recipe is for you! For more beet recipes, see our pickled beets and these roasted golden beets.

Key Ingredients

• Beets: The star of our salad. We start with raw beets and roast them whole until tender. Use red beets or yellow/golden beets here. To save some time, you can also purchase precooked beets (usually sold in the refrigerated section of the produce aisle). If you have any beets leftover, try juicing them and make our beet juice (we love it so much).
• Orange and Lemon: Our beet salad dressing is really citrusy (which we love!). You’ll need an orange and a lemon to make it. The fresh juice from both is what makes it so good.
• Olive Oil and Vinegar: These round out our dressing. Use a high-quality extra-virgin olive oil and a more delicate vinegar, such as white wine vinegar, rice wine vinegar, or champagne vinegar.
• Goat Cheese and Walnuts: After being tossed in our citrus dressing, the beets are lovely all by themselves, but this salad comes alive when you add goat cheese and walnuts. The texture is amazing, and the combination is super classic (for a reason!). Other nuts work here, too. Try pistachios, sliced almonds, or buttery pine nuts.
• Herbs: These are optional, but if you already have them in the fridge, add a couple of tablespoons of chopped fresh herbs. Mint, basil, and dill are our favorites.

Find the full recipe with measurements below.

How to Make Our Beet Salad

Tip 1: Roast the beets and let them cool. We already talked about using prepackaged cooked beets in our salad recipe below, but if you are like us and are starting with raw beets, you will need to roast them for this salad. It’s silly easy to do.

→ To roast beets for this salad, scrub them of any dirt, then add to a sheet of foil. Drizzle with olive oil, scrunch the foil into a packet, then roast in the oven until tender (we use 375°F, which takes about 45 minutes). Once your beets are tender, take them out of the oven, but leave them in the foil packet. Set them aside to cool to room temperature before using them to make the salad.

Tip 2: Make our citrus dressing. This dressing is absolutely perfect with beets. We make a lot of it. You’ll whisk together orange zest, lemon zest, orange juice, lemon juice, honey, vinegar, and olive oil. Season with salt and pepper, and it is ready for your beets.

Tip 3: Putting the salad together. When your roasted beets are at room temperature, peel them (a vegetable peeler makes quick work of it), then slice them into wedges. Add them to a bowl and pour most of the dressing over them. Arrange the beets on a platter, add goat cheese, scatter the nuts, then spoon more dressing over all of it. Finish with herbs and a sprinkle of flaky salt (if you have any on hand).

Tip 4: Turn this into a make-ahead salad. These beets are perfect for up to 5 days in the fridge. If you plan to meal-prep this beet salad, we recommend holding off on the goat cheese and adding that as you serve it. Otherwise, everything sits in the fridge really well!

Serving Suggestions

We’ve enjoyed this salad on the side with so many meals the last few weeks. The only thing to keep in mind is that once this salad hits your plate, there is a good chance that the bright red dressing will stain pretty much everything else there, too. Because it is so darn delicious, we don’t mind one bit, but we wanted you to know!

Some of my favorite mains we’ve enjoyed with this salad are on the lighter side, like our lemon dill baked salmon, baked pork chops, grilled chicken breasts, glazed salmon, and oven-baked trout.

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