Kale Beet Salad with Avocado Green Goddess Dressing

Beet kale salad in a large bowl drizzled with green goddess dressing.

5 from 17 votes

Kale Beet Salad with Avocado Green Goddess Dressing

This Kale Beet Salad is a hearty, fun salad, especially with the creamy Avocado Green Goddess Dressing!

This recipe is full of tips to make it as easy as possible. And it’s naturally gluten-free, dairy-free, Paleo and Whole30 friendly.

Prep Time20

Cook Time0

Total Time20

Course: Salad

Cuisine: American

Servings: servings

Calories: 424kcal

Author: Don Baiocchi

Ingredients

For the salad:

1 bunch curly leaf kale
¼ teaspoon fine sea salt
½ pound (approx. 6-8 oz.) cooked beets, packed in water or no/low vinegar (see notes) see notes
1 orange
½ cup toasted chopped walnuts
½ cup dried cranberries (fruit-sweetened for Paleo/Whole30)

For the Avocado Green Goddess Dressing

½ cup avocado oil mayonnaise (or any mayo you like)
½ small avocado or ¼ large avocado (see notes)
½ cup (not too tightly packed) flat-leaf parsley leaves, roughly chopped
¼ cup (not too tightly packed) basil, roughly chopped (if not available, try mint or another ¼ cup parsley)
2 tablespoons thinly sliced chives
2 tablespoons lemon juice or red wine vinegar (or a combination)
½ teaspoon anchovy paste (or 1 anchovy rinsed, patted dry and minced)
¼ teaspoon fine sea salt, plus more if necessary
ground black pepper
water, if needed

Instructions

For the salad:

Rinse and pat dry the kale leaves. Fold each leaf in half lengthwise and trim right down next to the stem to remove the leaves from the stem. Coarsely chop the leaves and add them to the bowl of your stand mixer. Sprinkle over the salt.
With the paddle attachment, start on the lowest speed. After the leaves have settled a bit more into the bowl, increase speed to medium. If bits of leaves start popping out of the bowl, you know you've raised the speed too high. Continue bashing the leaves until they've softened, darkened in color and reduced in size by about half, another 1-3 minutes.
Add the kale to a large bowl. You might have to do this process in 2 batches.
Meanwhile, Drain the beets, Depending on the size of your beets, halve them, quarter them or, if they're really big, cut those quarters in half crosswise.
Supreme the orange: Slice the top and bottom off the orange. Stand it on one of the cut sides and use a paring knife to slice off all the peel and pith from the top to the bottom. Slice off any remaining bits of peel or pith. Now slice right next to the membranes (the little strings running up and down, dividing the orange into sections) toward the core to release the wedges. Discard the membrane-y remnants of the orange when you're done.
Add the beets, orange slices, nuts and dried cranberries to the bowl with the kale.

For the dressing:

Using a blender, food processor or stick blender, blend all the dressing ingredients, including a good grinding of black pepper, until mostly smooth (it's okay if there's still little bits of herbs). If you don't have any of those appliances, that's fine! Mince the herbs as finely as you can, add them to rest of the ingredients and blend, mashing up the avocado as you go.
Taste the dressing: it should be pretty zippy. If not, add a bit more salt. If you think it's maybe a bit too much salt, I encourage you to use it anyway. Once it's thinned out over all the ingredients, it's not quite as punchy. However, if it's too thick you can blend in a teaspoon or two of water to think it out. If you do this, taste it again to see if the water diluted the flavor and adjust the seasoning if necessary.

To assemble:

Toss the salad with most of the dressing until everything is coated evenly. Taste a leaf: can you taste all the ingredients? If it's a little bland, sprinkle salt over the whole salad, toss and taste again. Does it need more acid? Drizzle a little more lemon juice or vinegar over the whole salad, toss and taste again.
Add more dressing if necessary or serve with the remaining dressing on the side.

Notes

Notes: This recipe originally called for granola clusters instead of the walnuts and dried cranberries.

This recipe is easy to double for a crowd.

I know: using only part of an avocado? You can chop the rest and add it to the salad if you'd like, but I find its creamy texture gets lost with the dressing. But hey, you have part of an avocado to do whatever you want with, and that's never a bad thing.

Substitutions

You can use other hearty greens instead of kale, such as spinach, Swiss chard or arugula.

You can use one can of mandarin oranges packed in juice, drained, instead of the orange.

If you don't want the Green Goddess dressing, you could also try this Maple Balsamic Dressing or this Tahini Date Dressing (but then omit the dried fruit from the salad if you don’t want it to be too sweet).

Instead of dried cranberries, you can use golden raisins, dried cherries or dried apricots (I used chopped unsulphured dried apricots in these pics.)

If you can't find pre-cooked beets in no/low vinegar, you can make your own. Scrub half a pound of beets and trim off any long stalks. Add them to a baking dish or loaf pan and fill with water halfway up the beets. Cover tightly with foil and bake in a 400° oven for an hour, or until a knife easily slides through to the middle. Let cool to room temperature and peel the beets, then cut into wedges. This can be done up to 3 days in advance; store them in the fridge.

Make ahead

The orange can be supremed up to 4 days in advance and stored in the fridge. The dressing can be made up to 3 days in advance and stored in the fridge. Do not dress the salad until right before serving.

If you can't find pre-cooked beets in no to low vinegar, you can make your own. Scrub half a pound of beets and trim off any long stalks. Add them to a baking dish or loaf pan and fill with water halfway up the beets. Cover tightly with foil and bake in a 400° oven for an hour, or until a knife easily slides through to the middle. Let cool to room temperature and peel the beets.

I like a basic granola so there's no strong flavors competing with the dressing. I use the vanilla berry granola from Kitchfix as it's just nuts, dried fruit and honey (with no coconut, which I think wouldn't work here), but any nutty gluten-free or Paleo-friendly granola will work.

I know: using only 1/4 of an avocado? You can chop the rest and add it to the salad if you'd like, but I find its creamy texture gets lost with the dressing. But hey, you have 3/4 of an avocado to do whatever you want with, and that's never a bad thing.

Nutrition