Beets

Sweet beets, crisp onion, and great olive oil and vinegar are all you need to make this simple and crowd-pleasing salad from Spanish winemaker Álvaro Palacios.

This two-tone polenta from Friulian winemaker Giampaolo Venica is incredibly easy to make: Just mix half of the polenta with pureed raw chard and the other half with pureed raw beet. The resulting dish, topped with thinly sliced ricotta salata, echoes the colors of the Italian flag.

This simple eastern European–style salad has been one of Nicolaus Balla’s favorites ever since he lived in Hungary as a teenager. He marinates sweet roasted beets in a red wine vinaigrette to make them more flavorful before tossing them with scallions, herbs and crumbled blue cheese.

Jenn Louis (a F&W Best New Chef 2012) found these intense beet gnocchi in northwestern Italy. They are sweet and earthy and so delicious, they barely need a sauce. When the beet greens are fresh enough, Louis adds them to the walnut-sage butter.

Gerry Hayden intensifies the nuttiness of his beet salad by drizzling pistachio oil on top.

Chef David Hawksworth serves an array of vegetable crostini. To intensify the flavor of boiled beets and form a rich glaze, he cooks them a second time in sherry vinegar and sugar.

Goat butter (sold at specialty-food stores; use regular butter if unavailable) is white, smooth and creamy. Chef Tyler Brown likes using it in this riff on the classic pairing of roasted beets and goat cheese.

Elizabeth Falkner loves having juice in the morning, because she feels it helps her "detox so she can retox." This intense savory juice gets a bracing pungency from freshly grated horseradish.

Steve Corry loves to toss roasted beets with the complex sherry vinegar that Taylor Griffin imports from Spain. To help mellow the vinegar's tang, Corry reduces tangerine juice to a syrup and adds it to the dressing. Inspired by peanut brittle, he candies marcona almonds to give the salad crunch. The nuts are fantastic on their own.

Benjamin Leroux's terrific soup is an unexpected mix of beets, tomatoes and tomato paste; it has the flavor of a light borscht.

For his salad, George Mendes uses fresh horseradish and Gegenbauer cider vinegar, a rare Austrian import. This version calls for jarred horseradish and supermarket apple-cider vinegar.

With its psychedelic color, this hot-pink beet dip is fun to serve with white and pale green vegetables like cauliflower and fennel. A little bit of honey and vinegar amps up the beet flavor.

Chef Ethan Stowell uses beets two different ways in this recipe. He roasts some of them, giving the salad a sweet flavor, and he thinly shaves the rest for a fresh, earthy crispness.

"It may not be widely known, but we have olive growers in South Texas, and they're making some great olive oil," says James Holmes. He drizzles that local oil on this simple mix of grilled beets, carrots and scallions.

Curly leaf spinach has great texture and flavor and holds this mustardy dressing well. For additional color, feel free to use a variety of different colored beets. You can also swap blood oranges for the tangerines.

These simple beets are wonderful in salads or by themselves, as a healthy snack.

To give this refreshing salad Palestinian flavor, Sam Mogannam seasons the dressing with ground sumac, a tangy Middle Eastern spice. While the color of golden beets contrasts nicely with dark red blood orange sections, any beet variety—from standard red ones to the white-and-pink striped chioggia—will be delicious.

When Han Feng develops a menu for a dinner party, she focuses on balancing colors as well as flavors and textures. For her gorgeous riff on the classic combination of beets and goat cheese, she tucks the creamy cheese between magenta-hued disks of cooked beet and adds a light soy-sauce dressing.

A surprise ingredient—a puree of the squat Italian cipollini onion—thickens and sweetens the mustard dressing on this wintry salad of earthy roasted red beets and chunks of silky avocado.

Beets give this creamy risotto stunning color and delicate sweetness. Grace Parisi suggests wearing rubber gloves and shredding the beets directly into a stainless steel bowl to avoid staining hands and countertops.

This clever recipe uses sweet-tart tangerines two ways: Sections of fruit are tossed into the salad, and tangerine juice flavors the vinaigrette.

Michel Nischan’s supermoist beet cake is layered with a silky, rich whiskey custard.

>Top Chef Masters finalist Traci des Jardins creates a gorgeous cold-weather hors d'oeuvre with roasted beets, horseradish cream and rye toast.

Fresh beet juice and shredded beets are the secret to this ultra-fresh, super-quick take on borscht.

Not only are macadamia nuts a good source of heart-healthy omega-3 fatty acids, but when they're pureed, they also serve as an ingeniously creamy base for dairy-free salad dressings.

Kenny Rochford pickles Chioggia beets from the winery gardens to use in the tasting room. They're perfect in a salad with parsley and fennel fronds.

Sorrel is a leafy green that gives dishes a tart, almost sour flavor. For this salad, Paul Liebrandt likes using red ribbon sorrel—a European variety with bright green leaves and intense red veins—because it's so pretty with the beets and because its tang is so nice with the nutty pistachio sauce.

Moroccans often start a big meal with several small salads, including one with marinated beets. Mourad Lahlou combines roasted beets with mizuna to create the large salad here.

These potato pancakes get a boost of flavor from sweet beets and thyme. They’re delicious with sour cream.

Both the beets and their greens are used in this hearty lentil salad, which has a delicious tart and creamy lemon dressing.

“Traditional Moroccan dishes can be quite heavy; I'm always looking for ways to make them lighter and brighter,” says cooking school teacher Tara Stevens. She tosses her beet salad with lettuce and tangy feta-yogurt dressing, and adds lots of fresh herbs.

Warm beets and tart grapefruit come together in this bright winter salad from Alex Roberts, chef of Alma in Minneapolis.