Swedish Pickled Beetroot Salad ♥

Today's recipe idea for a quick Easter vegetable: Pickled beets and orange slices in a light mayonnaise, sour cream and horseradish sauce. Traditional Scandinavian Christmas food. Bright pink in color!

This easy beet salad was one of three favorite new recipes last Christmas. It works so beautifully with ham, it's already on the Easter menu.

The combination of beets, sour cream and horseradish makes it much like Borscht Beets but this is special (better? perhaps!) because of the extra spark from pickled beets and the texture/flavor/color contrast from orange slices (or apples, as in the inspiring recipe from Karin at the great Swedish food blog, My Recipes).

WHERE TO FIND PICKLED BEETS? Our Christmas salad used up the last of some homemade pickled beets butcommercial pickled beets are found alongside canned beets in the canned vegetable aisle at the grocery. I also supplemented the homemade pickled beets with my favorite (and inexpensive) refrigerator pickle Swedish Beets (which, please be aware, must be refrigerated at least 24 hours before eating or using in this salad) and there was no telling the difference.

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MORE FAVORITE BEET RECIPES
Once beets are cooked, they make up into salads in minutes. Some favorites include:

~ Beets with Feta, so simple, so delicious it turns non-beet people into beet lovers! ~
~ Beet & Walnut Salad, a supper salad ~
~ Beet Carpaccio, looks so beautiful on a plate ~

~ more beet recipes ~

~ one year ago today Birdseye frozen vegetables with trans fat, except, good news, a reader has written that the transfats are gone! ~
~ two years ago today Mâche with Orange Cumin Dressing, a lovely simple salad dressing recipe ~

SWEDISH PICKLED BEETROOT SALAD

See Karin's inspiring recipe, some richer for those who tend that direction!
Hands-on time: 20 minutes
Time to table: 20 minutes (can be made ahead by a few hours)
Serves 4

1/4 cup mayonnaise (I used Hellman's Light, my favorite mayonnaise)
1/4 cup sour cream with a splash of lemon juice (I used this to substitute for Karin's crème fraîche)
1 tablespoon grated horseradish (I used a homemade grated horseradish that was quite hot, you might need to adjust for this)
1/2 tablespoon yellow onion, grated small with a cheese grater
6 pickled beets (homemade or commercial)
1 or 2 oranges, with peel sliced off, then the orange cut into bite-size slices (Karin uses sourish apples such as Granny Smith, I really loved the contrast of the dense beets and moist orange sections)
Salt
Pepper
Lemon Juice
Garnished with pickled herring (my addition)

Whisk together the mayonnaise, sour cream, horseradish and onion. Season with pepper, lemon juice. Taste the sauce and adjust as needed. Cut the beets into pieces, prep the oranges and stir into the sauce. Taste and adjust as needed. Garnish if you like. Refrigerate until serving but bring it out to come to room temperature beforehand. NOTE: If you prefer 'lightly dressed' beets, this sauce could handle quite a few more beets.

NUTRITION ESTIMATE
Per Serving: 129 Cal (52% from Fat, 6% from Protein, 42% from Carb); 2 g Protein; 8 g Tot Fat; 2 g Sat Fat; 1 g Mono Fat; 14 g Carb; 3 g Fiber; NetCarb11; 9 g Sugar; 48 mg Calcium; 1 mg Iron; 192 mg Sodium; 11 mg Cholesterol; Weight Watchers 2 points

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