Beet, Brussels, and Balsamic Barley Salad

Jeff the Chef
AKA Jeff Riffs on Mimi’s Favorite Salad

So many flavors! So many colors! This showstopping, rave-worthy, make-ahead-able, Beet, Brussels, and Balsamic Barley Salad is an out-and-out joy to eat, and given that it’s packed with veg and light on dressing, you’ll feel good about having it. (And you’ll want seconds.)

Beet, Brussels, and Balsamic Barley Salad
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Beet, Brussels, and Balsamic Barley Salad

Recipe by Make It Like a Man!Course: Dinner, Sides
Serves

6

as a main
Dirties

a lot

of dishes

Ingredients

  • For the beets and sprouts

  • 1 lb. Brussels sprouts

  • 3 medium-sized red beets

  • 3 medium-sized golden beets

  • 3 Tbs olive oil

  • 1 tsp kosher salt, plus more to taste

  • Freshly ground black pepper, to taste

  • For the barley

  • 1 cup (7 oz.) pearled barley

  • 1¾ cups (12 oz.) water

  • For the balsamic vinaigrette

  • 1⁄3 cup (3½ oz.) fig-and-plum-infused balsamic vinegar, or any other balsamic

  • 1 Tbs (½ oz.) Dijon mustard

  • 1 medium garlic clove, minced

  • ¾ tsp coarse salt, more or less to taste

  • Freshly ground black pepper, to taste

  • ¼ tsp dried basil, more or less to taste

  • ¼ tsp dried oregano, more or less to taste

  • ½ tsp dried tarragon, more or less to taste

  • 3⁄4 cup (7 oz.) extra-virgin olive oil

  • 2 tsp (⅜ oz.) maple syrup or honey (optional)

  • For assembly

  • ½ bag (8 oz.) frozen sweet corn

  • 7 small carrots (10 oz.), peeled and grated

  • 1 tsp fresh chopped dill

  • 2 stalks of celery, thinly sliced

  • 2 Tbs chopped Italian parsley

  • 2-3 oz. goat cheese

  • 2-3 oz. feta

  • 4 oz. dried cherries

  • 3 oz. dried apricots, sliced

Directions

  • Roast the beets and sprouts
  • Preheat the oven to 400°F.
  • Trim the ends of the Brussels sprouts and pull off any loose or tough outer leaves. Repurpose the beet greens, if the beets came with them. Remove the tops and the roots of the beets. Peel the beets, and cut them into chunks that are very roughly the size of – or larger than – the Brussels sprouts.
  • Place the beets and sprouts in a bowl with the oil, salt, and pepper. Toss with your hands. Pour the veg onto a sheet pan, use a silicone spatula to scrape any remaining oil and seasoning out of the bowl and onto the veg. Spread the veg evenly in the pan, and roast for 35-50 minutes, turning once or twice, until the sprouts are crisp on the outside and tender on the inside. Remove the sprouts check their seasoning. Continue roasting the beets until they’re tender, another 34-45 minutes. Remove the beets from the oven and check their seasoning.
  • Cook the barley
  • Place all ingredients into an Instant Pot. Stir. Set the Multi-Grain function to Normal (10 minutes), High (pressure); Natural Release for 10 minutes.
  • Make the dressing
  • Whisk everything except the oil (and syrup) in a stand mixer on highest speed until well blended. With the mixer continuing to run, slowly – as obsessively slowly as you can – pour in the oil. (Caution: mixture may splatter on your favorite shirt.) You should produce a thick, rich, homogenized dressing. Check seasoning (add syrup if needed).
  • Assembly
  • As soon as the barley’s cooked, stir the corn into it. Set aside until the mixture comes close to room temperature. Then, stir 4 Tbs of the dressing into the barley mixture. Check seasoning. Reserve 1 cup. Spread the remainder evenly in the bottom of a glass bowl whose capacity is at least 10 cups.
  • Stir 2-3 Tbs of the dressing into the carrots and layer them over the barley mixture. Slice the red and golden beets into ¼-inch-thick pieces and layer them atop the carrots. Sprinkle with dill. Stir 1 Tbs of dressing into the celery, check seasoning, and nestle it into the beets to create an even beet-and-celery layer. Sprinkle with parsley. Slice the sprouts into ¼-inch-thick pieces and layer them atop the parsley. Scatter reserved barley mixture over the sprouts, around the perimeter of the bowl. Crumble both cheeses into the crater created by the barley perimeter. Distribute the cherries and apricots over salad as a final layer.
  • Best served well-chilled, but can be served at at room temperature. Serve remaining dressing on the side, if desired.

Notes

  • I developed this recipe using a six-quart Instant Pot. If your Instant Pot is a different size, or if you use a different type of pressure cooker, you may have to make modifications to the ingredients and/or directions. Of course, there are ways to cook barley without an Instant Pot that offer just as good a result.
  • If you’re buying beets with greens, three medium-sized ones should weight 1¾ lbs. Without the greens, 1½ lbs. Quarter small beets, cut medium ones into eighths, cut large ones into sixteenths.
  • There are two tricks to this salad: 1) This one’s Mimi’s genius (see the backstory, below): dress the elements as you layer them. 2) This is surely implied, but I made it explicit: taste every element as you layer it into the bowl, to perfect the seasoning.

The backstory

I stumbled upon Mimi’s tantalizing layered salad, and decided to riff on it. The ingredients in blue, below, come from her recipe. I then determined each ingredient’s category, and asked my husband to name two more, Family Feud style. How’s that? I simply asked him something like, “Hey hon. Name two cruciferous vegetables.” If he named one of Mimi’s ingredients, I gave him a buzzer. Once I had all his answers (in red, below), I exercised veto power on the list as a whole and came up with what would make up my salad.

  • Grain: hulled barley, corn, quinoa
  • Taproot vegetable: carrots, red beets, yellow beets (yes, another beet …. but I’ll allow it)
  • Cruciferous vegetable: purple cabbage, arugula, Brussels sprouts
  • Umbelliferous vegetable: celery, dill, (contestant timed out; I added “parsley”)
  • Dried fruit: tart cherries, cranberries, apricots
  • Cheese: goat, feta, Pecorino-Romano

I determined that some of these items needed cooking, and some wanted cooking; I did this from scratch. However, you could find many of these items already cooked, on a well-stocked, grocery-store salad bar.

Social Learning

…about the salad

I was so eager to photograph it, that I forgot to add the cheese. Don’t nix the cheese! The salad depends on it! I love the mixture of feta and goat cheese. I also love the way the dill tastes with the cheese (and the rest of the salad), but I kept the amount of the dill extraordinarily light, because it’d otherwise be so easy for this salad to become “about” the dill, rather than having the dill accentuate it.

I created this as main-course salad. But as I was working on it, my husband asked me to include chicken. I didn’t want to, but I said I’d give him chicken on the side. I wound up serving the salad with breaded, pan-fried breasts, and it was amazing. Turns out, this salad makes a great meal on its own, but works quite well as a side.

Although this salad is made with vegetables that you might associate with winter, because it’s served cold, it’s nice for summer. It’s sort of like potato salad in that way: hearty, filling, would be great eaten on a park bench.

This salad is good freshly made, at room temperature, but served cold after an overnight in the fridge, it becomes phenomenal. That makes it a perfect make-ahead item, whether that means you’re taking it to work or a potluck.

Replace half of the vinegar with lemon juice. Delicious!

…about roasting (and baking)

Don’t assume that your oven is actually roasting at 400°F, even though that’s what you’ve asked it to do. If you went someplace that markets to the average buyer, rather than high-end foodies, and ordered all the stoves from least to most expense on a scale of one to ten, mine have, over the years, been sevens or eights. OK, maybe a few of them have been sixes. On the decent side of ordinary. I think a lot of people have stoves like mine, and I think most of those people have no idea how inaccurate their ovens are.

An oven thermometer – which costs about the same as a grande hazelnut latte – will confirm not only whether your oven will burn at 400°F if you set it to 400°F, but whether or not it will have reached that temperature when it tells you that the preheat cycle is complete. My oven has a function that will let you compensate for problems, which I’ve used to make it burn accurately at 350°F, but that doesn’t guarantee its accuracy across the range of its temperatures. To get it to burn at 400°F, I have to set it to 385°F. The moral of the story: if you wonder why it takes you more time to roast vegetables that the recipe recommends, or you find that they’re burning instead of roasting …. or for that matter if you wonder why you can’t seem to bake successful cakes or get a decent rise out of loaf of bread, get yourself an oven thermometer.

Beet, Brussels, and Balsamic Barley Salad

Credit for images on this page: Make It Like a Man! This content was not solicited by anyone, nor was it written in exchange for anything. Thank you, Kesor. Thanks, Prosper Circle. References: Carolina Country, Food Network, Ina Garten, Masterclass, The Chef Mimi Blog, Times Colonist.

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37 thoughts on “Beet, Brussels, and Balsamic Barley Salad”

  3. Such a nutritious salad with rich ingredients. Its preparation takes time but it is worth. I would like to try it with fish base dish. Have a wonderful day.

    Reply

  4. This salad indeed looks phenomenal! I imagine, like you say, day 2 refrigerated is most awesome! i also like the Family Feud with Veto power idea, I’ll have to try that sometime. I appreciate your recommendation of the oven thermometer. I know for my convection oven, I need to lower the temp by 15-25 degrees compared to what’s recommended, but I’ve never tested the temperature to see if it’s accurate.
    Laura recently posted…Brown Butter Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies

    Reply

    • Yeah, someone w once told me about the importance of an oven thermometer, and now I swear by it.

      Reply

  5. I love layered salads, and yours has so many delicious labd colourful layers with a superb dressing. Wonderful idea to dress each layer. My only regret is I don’t think I can find yellow beets here. I use barley a lot, and roast my veges so I think this salad is is an absolute must for me. Thanks so much for all the instructions as well. Great work.
    Pauline recently posted…Rosemary Pumpkin Spice Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting

    Reply

    • I did have to search around for yellow beets. Found them at Whole Foods.

      Reply

  6. Hi. Sounds like a good one. Speaking of beets, have you had borscht? My father loved it. I wasn’t a fan of borscht, but that was a long time ago. Maybe I’d like it now.

    Reply

  7. Beets and barley are one of my favourite salad combinations, and you’ve come up with a really nice version, packed with even more flavours and textures! I also love your game on picking the ingredients – I should try it too!

    Reply

  8. I have a confession to make. I have never in my 41 years of life, tried a beet. Shocking, I know. I do have it on my bucket list of foods to try before the end of summer, so this will be a great recipe to start with. Looks like a great summer salad everyone should try!
    Theresa recently posted…Mocha Ice Cream Pie

    Reply

  9. Ah, good point about calibrating the oven temperature. I’m not sure when the last time I did that was! In other news, I love when you guys do the Family Feud style recipes! You never know what you’re going to end up with…literally. In this case, it sounds pretty awesome! Although I can’t blame your husband for timing out on umbelliferous vegetables…
    David @ Spiced recently posted…Fresh Strawberry Coffee Cake

    Reply

  10. Yup, we do have an oven thermometer. Our oven’s thermostat is actually quite accurate, so I don’t use the thermometer often. But I DO use it once every month or so just to check things out (the thermostat can drift over time and become less accurate). Use thermometers in my refrigerator and freezer, too. Anyway, nice dish! Thanks.
    John / Kitchen Riffs recently posted…The Lucien Gaudin Cocktail

    Reply

  11. That’s hilarious (and ingenious) creating a recipe ‘Family Feud’ style! I must try this one day. I’m usuallu not a fan of brussels sprouts but this recipe makes me want to delve right in!

    Reply

  13. Hahahahahaha! I’m rolling on the floor! I am so glad I didn’t miss this post, not just because I’m in it!!! Love what you did here. A great new salad. Good textures and flavors. I had hand surgery again so I’m a bit behind!!!
    mimi rippee recently posted…Chicken Biryani

    Reply

  15. I love vegetarian dishes like this . It does so healthy, hearty, and delicious. I also love the layered presentation.

    Reply

  16. I love all the layers, and I love the alliteration! Looks like an amazing maincourse salad for the summer. And since were hitting temperatures way over 100 these days… It’s just what we need!

    Reply

    • Thanks! We’re not into the 100’s, but it’s been beautiful. Perfect for a cold, outdoor dish.

      Reply
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