Vinaigrette salad – recipe for popular Russian beet salad

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Healthy, vegan, colorful, filling and so versatile in taste is the vinaigrette salad or vinegret. You can easily and quickly make the famous Russian beet salad yourself. It is ideal as an appetizer, main dish or vegetable salad for lunch or dinner. A detailed vinaigrette salad recipe with exact quantities and step-by-step instructions can be found below.

What is vinaigrette salad?

Vinegret is a popular salad of Russian cuisine made of cooked and pickled vegetables. Along with Olivier, it is one of the traditional salads of the Soviet era.

The main ingredient is boiled or gratinated beet. Also included in the salad are boiled potatoes and carrots, pickled cucumbers or sauerkraut, pickled kidney beans or peas, and raw onions or spring onions.

Some suggest that the beet salad recipe originated under the influence of French cuisine. The word “vinegret” comes from the French “vinaigrette” (vinaigre means “vinegar”).

Colorful, healthy, vegan

With its bright eye-catching color, vinaigrette salad is an eye-catcher on the dining table. Especially beet makes the salad so colorful.

In terms of taste, vinegret is very versatile. Thanks to so many different ingredients, it combines a lot of flavors. All components combine with each other and perfectly complement each other.

The beet salad contains a lot of vegetables and therefore a lot of vitamins and nutrients. So it is not only incredibly tasty, but also healthy.

In addition, vinaigrette salad consists exclusively of vegetable ingredients. Therefore, it is suitable for vegans.

How to prepare beet for salad?

I recommend you to buy raw beet for the salad and cook it yourself. Because with it vinegret tastes much better and contains more vitamins than with the pre-cooked vegetables from the supermarket.

Cook whole unpeeled beet in water, let it cool and peel it only afterwards.

Alternatively, you can bake the vegetables in the oven. Place it unpeeled in a heatproof container with a lid or wrap it in aluminum foil and bake it in the oven until the beet is cooked. This way it retains its nutrients and develops more flavor.

How to serve and store vinegret?

Vinaigrette salad can be served in many ways.

It tastes delicious with a side dish as an ordinary vegetable salad.

Since the beet salad is quite filling, you can serve it as a cold main course. Serve it with freshly baked whole wheat bread or baguette.

Russian beet salad is also ideal as a cold starter.

Vinegret tastes even better the next day than immediately after preparation. So you can make it the day before. Store the beet salad in a salad bowl with a closed lid** in the refrigerator.

In Russia people like to serve vinaigrette salad at festivities. At a New Year’s Eve party, for example, it can’t be missing next to Russian eggs.

Versatile modifiable

For vinegret, just as for borscht, there are many different recipes, which differ somewhat in the ingredients. Everyone makes the beet salad according to his taste and chooses the ingredients according to his preferences.

For example, vinaigrette salad with pickled peas is very popular. They then replace beans in the salad. So you can also use peas instead of beans for the recipe below.

I have made my vinegret with both pickled cucumbers and sauerkraut. But you can opt for just one of the two ingredients, depending on what you like of them. You may have to adjust the amount of pickled cucumbers or sauerkraut.

Instead of onions, you can use spring onions for the vinaigrette salad.

You can refine the beet salad with various fresh herbs, such as dill or parsley. You can also season it with any spices you like.

You can also vary the amount of vegetables according to your taste.

This vinaigrette salad is

• crisp,
• fresh,
• versatile,
• incredibly tasty,
• vegan,
• healthy – with lots of vegetables,
• filling,
• easy and quick to make,
• ideal as an appetizer, salad or main course,
• even more delicious the next day,
• popular beet salad of Russian cuisine.

Vinaigrette salad recipe simple and fast

The vinaigrette salad recipe you’ll find below is pretty simple and quick. The longest part is the cooking of the vegetables. But you can do that the day before.

Cut the vegetables into small pieces. Then mix all the ingredients together to make the salad. Now you can serve it.

How to make vinegret: tips and tricks

• Instead of boiling beet, you can cook it in the oven. See my notes here above.
• Instead of kidney beans, you can add canned or jarred peas to the salad.
• You can also use just pickled cucumbers or just sauerkraut and adjust the amount to taste.
• Finish the salad with fresh herbs of your choice.
• The beet salad tastes even better the next day. Let it sit in the refrigerator for at least a few hours after preparation.

Have you made vinaigrette salad according to this recipe? I’m looking forward to your result, your star rating and your comment here below on how you succeeded and tasted the Russian beet salad.

Got an appetite for more delicious salads? Also try:

• Russian carrot salad with garlic – 3 ingredients recipe
• Vegan tuna salad / tuna sandwich spread – no tuna cream recipe
• Coleslaw with sour cream – recipe for Russian white cabbage salad

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