Orange and Raw Beet Salad Recipe (With Video)

This transcription will have some mistakes because it is partially automated.

Hello and welcome to Freshly Served, the healthy vegan recipes. I’m Heather and today we are going to make a salad base around beets.

Over at my nutrition blog at HealthyEatingStartsHere.com, I’ve been getting a lot of comments since I’ve been writing about the benefits of raw vegetables asking for some recipes that are raw.

So today we’re gonna do that and I’m also gonna show you how I actually make recipes because you usually see me with the recipe that I’ve come up with ahead of time and I make it and I show you how to do that but that’s not actually how I cook for myself so I thought I would show you what I actually do.

And what I do is start with something that I want to use so I got beets today and I’m using beets because raw recipes is very difficult to get calories without using fats or oils. A lot of people fell into that trap when they’re eating raw food that they get a lot of calories from fat and it’s hard to get complex carbohydrates without grains or beans.

So root vegetables are good way to do that and beets are nice one that you might not think to have raw. We eat a lot of raw carrots but not beets and they are pretty sweet but the difficulty with root vegetables is that they can be pretty hard for your system to digest.

So what we’re going to do today is grate the carrots so that they’re physically broken up a little bit and we’re also gonna marinate them in a dressing somehow and I’ll probably gonna use a little bit of salt to help that along.

So what you wanna start with is peel your beets, I’ve already done that and then grate them which is my least favorite part but sometimes you just have to do it. If you have a food processor that have a grating attachment awesome! So much quicker!

So I got them all grated up, looking much more digestible and the problem with digesting root vegetable is that you really have to chew them and so grating means we don’t have to chew so much to get them broken up.

Side benefits of beets is that they dye things really well so if you’re looking for a natural dye, beets are great one to use. The negative of that benefit is that they dye your fingers particularly when you use them raw.

So this is the point at which I go to the fridge and try to figure out what else I’m gonna put in this dish so I’ve got carrots another root vegetable and I’m gonna grate those up along with the beets. Broccoli first time reason is I like the flavor to go along with beets.

Now beets and carrots have a little bit of sweetness to them naturally so I’m gonna go with that and I also have a big box of oranges sitting around so I’m gonna do an orange and I think I’m gonna put some orange into the salad as well as zesting and juicing another orange to use for a dressing.

Orange juice is less acidic than vinegar so it’s a nice option to use that won’t leave an acidic residue on your teeth and in your body and cause issues there so carrot grating time.

So our bowl is getting nicely full over here with the grated carrots and the broccoli. Next thing I’m gonna do is zest these oranges so I’m gonna take my zester and put that right into the jar that I’m gonna make the dressing in.

A zester is a great tool because it takes just the very outside of the peel off. If you don’t have one you can use a grater but it doesn’t work quite the same and zesters are really cheap so if you don’t have one go try to pick one up.

Alright! So like I said I got one orange chopped up into the salad, the other I juice into this jar and you can’t really see how much zest I have in here but I’m pretty excited about it coz there’s a lot.

Alright! So, next thing I did was take a trip to the cupboard and see what kind of flavors I want in here and orange goes really nicely with ginger and you can do some fresh ginger if you’re doing it raw I would really suggest grating it up and then squeezing the juice into this dressing.

And then you can use some oil if you like. I’m gonna use a little bit of olive oil just to carry the flavors a little bit better. It kind of – really just it carries the flavors better.

And then some salt in there and the salt is not only to bring the flavors of the dish together in this case but what it gonna do is actually soften the vegetables so I’m gonna leave this to sit for a little while and let the dressing marinate into those root vegetables so that they soften up.

Same with the broccoli, it softens the flavor a little bit and the texture and the nice thing about using an orange in this dressing is that orange has Vitamin C and some natural antioxidants that will help the grated carrot and beet from oxidizing as it sits in the air because it has been grated it has a lot of surface area that can come in contact with the air but the orange juice helps to minimize that. You can see it when it goes brown.

So the last thing that I’ll show you is how to grate and juice ginger. So I’m gonna take the ginger and cut a slice off. So for this amount of dressing I’m gonna use about that much ginger. What’s that like? Not quite an inch, maybe somewhere between half and three quarters. You can call that two-thirds if you like.

Then I usually have a special grater for ginger but you can use a regular grater so I’ll show you how to do that, a lot of grating today. Ok! So I’m grating this skin and all because it doesn’t really matter and a lot of the juice is actually right next to the skin. Freshest spot!

So, grate that all up and you may have notice I’m doing this over a spoon because as you grate the juice comes out of the ginger and if you don’t have a spoon there it will just go into your cutting board which isn’t the end of the world but when you save as much juice as you can, why not?

So pull all of that ginger off the grater, it likes to stick because it got some stringiness to it and then once you got a reasonable amount here and then you take your spoon and I can get this really on camera, there we go and then you just squeeze this ginger and see how the juice comes out nicely. Yes! That is how you get the flavor of the ginger without so much of the bite.

Then all I need to do is shake up my dressing, pour it on your salad, let that sit for as long as you like, not too long coz the vegetables will dry out and oxidize but an hour or so you should have a very beautiful, very delicious, very healthy beet carrot broccoli orange salad.

So there is our very flavorful raw beet salad and I forgot to take notes as I went but I’ll have to remember what exactly I put in here and how much that I propose the recipe for you and that will be at HealthyVeganRecipes.net.

Remember with raw foods that advance planning is your friend, cooking brings flavor together very quickly but when you do something raw its best to leave it for a little bit for the flavor can combine.

It will take a little bit longer but it will happen and I hope you enjoy it and if you want to learn more on why I am cooking raw food and then nutrition side of things head over at HealthyEatingStartsHere.com. Thanks! I’m Heather and have a great day.