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Beetroot and pickle salad with apple and dill
Cooked beetroot, sharp dill pickles and crisp apple in a simple mustard dressing, without turning everything into a mayonnaise salad.
In this guide5 sections
Let the beetroot stain the bowl
Beetroot will colour the apple and pickle as you mix this salad. We would not try to stop it: the pink edges are part of the dish. What matters more is cutting everything into comparable small pieces, so the earthy beetroot does not arrive as a large chunk followed by a lonely sliver of pickle.
Yield: 4 side servings. Prep time: 20 minutes. Cook time: 0 minutes. Use plain, cooked, chilled beetroot rather than beetroot already packed in vinegar. The pickles provide the sharpness here, and starting with another pickled vegetable makes that balance harder to control.
Ingredients
- 400 g (14 oz) plain cooked chilled beetroot
- 150 g (5 oz) drained dill pickles
- 1 crisp apple, about 150 g after coring
- 30 g red onion, finely diced
- 10 g fresh dill, chopped
- 25 ml (5 teaspoons) olive oil
- 15 ml (1 tablespoon) lemon juice
- 10 g (2 teaspoons) Dijon mustard
- ¼ teaspoon ground black pepper
Method
- Drain any liquid from the cooked beetroot and pat it dry. Dice into roughly 1 cm cubes on a board you can wash immediately afterwards. Avoid grating it, which releases more juice into the salad.
Dice the cooked beetroot; grating would release more juice. - Dice the pickles into slightly smaller pieces and blot them. Wash and core the apple, leaving sound skin on, then dice it to match the beetroot. Put the apple in a bowl with the lemon juice straight away.
Toss the apple in the lemon juice as soon as it is diced. - Add the olive oil, mustard and black pepper to the apple bowl. Stir until the mustard disperses, coating the apple rather than remaining in a lump underneath it.
- Add the beetroot, pickles and finely diced onion. Fold gently with a broad spoon until the dressing reaches the bottom of the bowl. The colour will begin spreading through the apple as you work.
Fold gently as the beetroot colour begins spreading through the apple. - Wash, dry and chop the dill, then fold it through just before serving. If the salad needs to wait, cover and refrigerate it; stir briefly before bringing it to the table.
Choose plain beetroot carefully
Ready-cooked beetroot is a useful shortcut, but read the ingredient list. A packet containing beetroot alone behaves differently from a jar with vinegar and sugar. For this recipe, the plain version lets the pickle and lemon do their jobs without an extra sweet-sour dressing entering the bowl.
The apple supplies the crispest bite. A floury or bruised apple will soften quickly once cut and mixed, so choose one you would enjoy eating raw. You do not need a particular named variety; firm flesh and a flavour you like are enough.
For a more substantial lunch, try chickpea salad with lemon and pickles. Browse more cold pickle dishes to use the remainder of the pickle jar.
At the table
Serve the day it is made for the best apple texture. Keep any untouched portion covered in the fridge and use the next day.
Keep cold during storage and serving; see the recipe library’s storage guidance.
Keep the jar open
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