This beet lentil salad is roasted beets sliced into rounds, laid flat on a platter, with dressed French green lentils spooned over the top and feta, toasted walnuts and celery leaves scattered across. It is not tossed, and that is deliberate.
Toss a beet lentil salad together in a bowl and within about a minute everything in it is uniformly magenta. Everything tastes the same and looks worse. Layering keeps the beets dark, the lentils olive green and the feta white, and it takes no more effort than stirring would.
- Roasted beets and lentils instead of leaves, so it holds for two days without wilting
- A honey and Dijon vinaigrette sharp enough to stand up to earthy beets
- Feta, walnuts and celery leaves for salt, fat and something green
- Layered rather than tossed, so nothing turns pink
- Substantial enough to be lunch on its own, at about 14 grams of protein a serving
- Both components can be cooked two days ahead and assembled in five minutes
A beet lentil salad has two components that cook separately, and the only real decision is how you put them together.
- What Makes This Beet Lentil Salad Different
- Ingredient Notes
- How To Roast Beets Without Staining Everything
- Why French Green Lentils and Not Brown Ones
- How To Make Beet Lentil Salad
- Layer It, Do Not Toss It
- Make It Ahead
- Storing Beet Lentil Salad
- Variations and Substitutions
- What to Serve with Beet Lentil Salad
- Beet Lentil Salad FAQ
What Makes This Beet Lentil Salad Different
Most beet salads are beets, a soft cheese and leaves. This one replaces the leaves with a pound and a quarter of cooked lentils, which changes what the dish is for. It stops being a first course and becomes something you can eat as a meal.
The beets are roasted, not boiled. Forty to sixty minutes covered in a dish with rosemary and a little oil concentrates them. Boiled beets leach their sugar into the water and come out watery and flat.
The lentils are cooked with aromatics, not plain. Garlic, a bay leaf and salt in the pot. Lentils cooked in unsalted water taste of almost nothing and no amount of dressing afterward fixes it.
The dressing goes on the lentils while they are warm. Warm pulses absorb vinaigrette in a way that cold ones do not, which is the single biggest improvement you can make to any beet lentil salad.
Celery does two jobs. The stalks give crunch, which the dish otherwise lacks entirely, and the leaves give a bitter green note that reads as herbal without needing herbs.
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Ingredient Notes
A beet lentil salad runs to fifteen ingredients across three parts. Exact amounts are in the recipe card below.
- Beets: a pound and a half of small ones, which is roughly six. Small beets roast in forty minutes and stay firm enough to slice; a large one takes over an hour and goes woolly at the center.
- French green lentils: a cup and a quarter. Lentilles du Puy or the cheaper French green sold as such. They hold their shape after twenty five minutes; brown lentils collapse into puree and the whole dish turns to mush.
- Feta: a third of a cup crumbled, from a block in brine rather than pre-crumbled, which is drier and saltier. Goat cheese works and is milder.
- Walnuts: an ounce and a half, toasted in a dry pan until they smell of themselves. Raw walnuts are bitter and slightly astringent here.
- Celery leaves: a third of a cup, the pale inner ones from the heart. They are the best part of the celery and most people throw them away.
- Red wine vinegar and lemon juice: both. The vinegar is the backbone and the lemon lifts it, and using only one makes the dressing flat against the sweetness of the beets.
- Rosemary: two sprigs, roasted with the beets and then discarded. It perfumes them without leaving anything to chew.
How To Roast Beets Without Staining Everything
The color in beets is betanin, the red pigment that gives beetroot its color, and it is water-soluble, which is exactly why it gets on everything.
Roast them whole and unpeeled. Scrub them, trim the tops and the tip, and leave the skin on. Intact skin keeps the pigment and the sugar inside the beet.
Cover the dish with foil. This steam-roasts rather than dry-roasts them, so they cook evenly and the skins slip off afterward.
Rub the skins off with a paper towel once they are cool enough to handle but still warm. They come away in sheets. Doing this cold means peeling, which is slow and messy.
Wear gloves or accept it. Betanin comes off skin in a day and comes off a wooden board never, so use a plastic board or a plate.
Slice them with a serrated knife. Roasted beets are slippery and a straight blade skates. Quarter-inch rounds are the right thickness for a beet lentil salad.
Why French Green Lentils and Not Brown Ones
The lentil choice matters more in a beet lentil salad than anything else in the recipe, because the salad depends on the lentils staying separate.
French green lentils hold their shape. They have a thicker seed coat and less starch, so twenty five minutes of simmering leaves them firm with a little bite at the center.
Brown and green supermarket lentils fall apart. They are bred for soup, where breaking down is a virtue. In a beet lentil salad they turn into a paste that coats everything.
Black beluga lentils are the best substitute, and they look better against the beets than the green ones do. Cook them for the same time.
Red and yellow lentils are hopeless here. They are split and skinned and they disintegrate in twelve minutes. There is no version of this salad that works with them.
Do not rely on the packet time. Lentil age matters more than variety, and lentils that have sat in a cupboard for two years can take forty minutes. Start tasting at twenty.
How To Make Beet Lentil Salad
A beet lentil salad has two things cooking at once. Start the beets first, since they take the longest, and cook the lentils while they roast.
- First, roast the scrubbed beets with the rosemary and oil, covered with foil, at 400F for 40 to 60 minutes, until a knife slides through with no resistance.
- Next, simmer the lentils with the garlic, bay leaf and salt in 4 cups of water, uncovered, for 20 to 25 minutes, then drain them and pull out the garlic and bay.
- Then whisk the dressing and pour about two thirds of it over the lentils while they are still warm. Stir in the sliced celery and half the celery leaves.
- After that, rub the skins off the beets with a paper towel, slice them into quarter-inch rounds and lay them across a platter in a single overlapping layer. Spoon the rest of the dressing over them.
- Finally, pile the dressed lentils down the middle and scatter the feta, walnuts and remaining celery leaves over the top.
Layer It, Do Not Toss It
This is the part almost every beet lentil salad gets wrong, including the version this one grew out of, which said to toss everything together in a bowl.
Beet juice is a dye. Within sixty seconds of stirring, the lentils are pink, the feta is pink and the walnuts are pink. It still tastes fine and it looks like something that has been sitting out.
Layering keeps four colors on the plate. Dark red beets underneath, olive lentils on top, white feta and bright green celery leaves over that.
It also keeps the textures apart. The beets stay soft and the lentils stay firm, and you get both in a forkful rather than one homogeneous texture.
Use a wide platter, not a bowl. A bowl forces everything into a heap and people stir it to serve themselves anyway.
Assemble it at the last minute even though both components keep for days. Five minutes with a slotted spoon is all it takes.
Make It Ahead
A beet lentil salad is close to an ideal make-ahead dish, because everything in it improves with a night in the refrigerator except the walnuts.
Roast the beets up to three days ahead. Leave them whole and unpeeled in a covered box; the skins still slip off cold, just less easily.
Cook and dress the lentils two days ahead. They genuinely get better, because the vinaigrette keeps soaking in. Hold back the celery.
Mix the dressing up to a week ahead and keep it in a jar. Shake it hard before using since the mustard separates.
Toast the walnuts a week ahead and keep them airtight at room temperature. In the refrigerator they go soft.
Slice the celery on the day. It is the only thing here that goes limp, and it is the only source of crunch, so it matters.
Take the lentils out of the refrigerator half an hour before assembling. Cold olive oil is thick and dull, and the salad tastes much better a little above refrigerator temperature.
Storing Beet Lentil Salad
- Assembled, refrigerated: beet lentil salad keeps 2 days, though it goes pink after the first stir.
- Components apart: dressed lentils 3 days, roasted whole beets 3 days, dressing 1 week.
- Walnuts and feta separately until serving. Walnuts soften in a few hours and feta breaks down into the dressing.
- Freezing: the dressed lentils freeze for 2 months. The beets do not, and thaw watery.
- Serve it cool, not cold. Thirty minutes out of the refrigerator makes a noticeable difference.
Variations and Substitutions
In a beet lentil salad the beets, the lentils and the acid are structural. Everything else can be swapped.
- Goat cheese instead of feta: milder and creamier, and it melts slightly against warm lentils.
- Beluga lentils for a starker black-against-red plate, cooked for the same time.
- Orange in place of the lemon: the zest and juice of half a small one, which suits beets particularly well.
- Hazelnuts or pistachios instead of walnuts, toasted the same way.
- Add a soft-boiled egg per person and it becomes a proper dinner.
- Dill or flat-leaf parsley alongside the celery leaves, a small handful, chopped at the last minute.
- Vegan: leave the feta out and add two tablespoons of capers, which replaces the salt and the sharpness.
- Golden beets if the staining is the problem. They are milder and nothing turns pink.
What to Serve with Beet Lentil Salad
Beet lentil salad is earthy, sharp and substantial, so it wants either something rich next to it or nothing at all.
- Roast chicken or a piece of oily fish such as mackerel, which the vinegar cuts straight through.
- Good bread and butter, if it is lunch on its own.
- A sharp green salad, since this one has no leaves in it at all.
- Anything grilled and smoky, where the beets read as sweet against the char.
- Next to a bowl of stovetop lentil soup on a table where the same pulse turns up twice.
For more of the same cupboard, there is my ham and lentil soup, a mayonnaise-free lemon potato salad that keeps just as well, and a note on whether lentil curry freezes, which applies to the lentils here too.
Here is what readers ask most often.
Beet Lentil Salad FAQ
Frequently Asked Questions
Do I have to peel the beets before roasting?
No, and you should not. Roast them scrubbed and whole with the skin on, which keeps the color and the sugar inside instead of bleeding out. Once they are cool enough to handle but still warm, the skins rub off with a paper towel in seconds. Peeling raw beets is slow, stains far more, and costs you flesh you would rather eat.
Can I use canned or pre-cooked beets?
You can, and the salad drops noticeably. Vacuum-packed cooked beets are usually boiled and often stored in vinegar, so they are wetter, sharper and much less sweet than roasted ones. If you use them, drain them well, pat them dry and skip the extra dressing over the beet layer. Roasting is forty minutes of oven time that needs no attention, so it is worth it.
Is beet lentil salad served warm or cold?
Cool, not cold, and it is at its best about half an hour out of the refrigerator. Warm is also good if you are eating it straight away, with the lentils just dressed and the beets still hot from the oven. Straight from the refrigerator is the worst of the three, because the olive oil is thick and the beets taste muted.
More Questions About Beets and Lentils
Frequently Asked Questions
How do I stop everything turning pink?
Layer it rather than tossing it. Lay the sliced beets flat on the platter and spoon the dressed lentils over the top, so the only contact is at the join. If you have to transport it, keep the two in separate boxes and assemble on arrival. Golden beets are the other answer and they do not stain at all.
Do lentils need soaking?
No. Lentils are the one pulse that goes straight into the pot. Rinse them and pick over for small stones, which do turn up in French green lentils more often than you would like, then simmer them uncovered. Soaking makes them cook unevenly and split.
Why are my lentils still hard after 25 minutes?
Almost always age. Lentils that have been in the cupboard for a couple of years can take forty minutes or more, and no amount of heat speeds that up. Hard water slows them too. Keep them at a bare simmer rather than a boil, top up with hot water so they stay just covered, and start tasting every five minutes from the twenty minute mark.
Can I make this vegan?
Yes. Leave out the feta and add two tablespoons of rinsed capers, which give you back the salt and the sharpness the cheese was providing. Swap the honey in the dressing for maple syrup. Everything else in a beet lentil salad is already plant-based, and with the capers it does not read as a version with something missing.
A beet lentil salad made this way keeps for days, travels in two boxes and is one of the few salads that is genuinely better made in advance. If you have lentils left over, my stovetop lentil soup is what to do with them.
Beet Lentil Salad with Feta and Walnuts
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Ingredients
The Beets and Lentils
- 1 1/2 pounds small beets about 6, scrubbed and trimmed
- 2 sprigs rosemary roasted with the beets, then discarded
- 1 tablespoon olive oil for roasting
- 1 1/4 cups French green lentils rinsed and picked over, or beluga
- 4 cups water topped up with hot water if needed
- 2 cloves garlic crushed, removed after cooking
- 1 bay leaf removed after cooking
- 1 teaspoon fine sea salt in the lentil water
The Honey Dijon Dressing
- 1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
- 1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
- 2 tablespoons red wine vinegar
- 1 teaspoon honey or maple syrup
- 1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
- 1/2 teaspoon fine sea salt
- 1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
To Finish
- 2 large celery stalks thinly sliced on the day
- 1/3 cup roughly chopped celery leaves the pale inner ones
- 1 1/2 ounces walnuts toasted and chopped, about 1/3 cup
- 1/3 cup crumbled feta cheese from a block in brine
Instructions
Roast the Beets
- Heat the oven to 400F. Put the scrubbed beets and the rosemary sprigs in an oven-proof dish, drizzle with the tablespoon of olive oil and cover the dish tightly with foil.
- Roast 40 to 60 minutes depending on size, until a knife goes into the largest one with no resistance. Leave them until cool enough to handle but still warm, then rub the skins off with a paper towel and discard the rosemary. Work on a plate or a plastic board, since the juice stains wood permanently.
Cook the Lentils
- While the beets roast, put the lentils, crushed garlic, bay leaf and the teaspoon of salt in a medium pot with the 4 cups of water. Bring to a boil, drop to a bare simmer and cook uncovered 20 to 25 minutes, topping up with hot water so they stay just covered.
- Start tasting at 20 minutes. They should be tender with a little bite at the center and still whole. Old lentils can take 40 minutes, so go by taste rather than the clock. Drain them and pull out the garlic and bay leaf.
Dress the Lentils Warm
- Whisk the olive oil, Dijon, vinegar, honey, lemon juice, salt and pepper together until thick. Pour about two thirds of it over the drained lentils while they are still warm and stir well, then fold in the sliced celery and half the celery leaves.
Layer and Serve
- Slice the peeled beets into quarter-inch rounds with a serrated knife and lay them across a wide platter in a single overlapping layer. Spoon the remaining dressing over them.
- Pile the dressed lentils down the middle without stirring them into the beets, then scatter the feta, toasted walnuts and remaining celery leaves over the top. Serve cool rather than cold.