There is a time and place for a fancy, beautifully plated salad. This is not that time. This is a salad with some guts, some moxy, some pizazz, some attitude. It's messy and put-together at the same time -- that disheveled sort of sexy. It's bright and earthy. It's grounding and enlivening. It's a zig-zag of winter-seasonal veg pepped up with citrus, tamari, coriander and hot chili pepper.

It might be the best thing I've made all Winter. A beet salad that's sweet, tangy, spicy, crunchy and filling? YES.

And it takes under 30 minutes!

This warm, roasted red cabbage and beet salad makes an amazing weeknight meal. Yeah, the kind of weeknight meal that makes you do praise-hands and yell "oh hot damn I AM A QUEEN."

It's that good.

And it's goddam pretty even all piled up and eaten right off of the pan.

I threw this meal together at the end of February as a last ditch effort to use up the remaining vegetables in my crisper drawer: beets and purple cabbage.

I love to keeps beets and purple cabbage around because they roast up so beautifully, and I can always rely on them to be both flavorful and filling. They've saved me from having to make a last-minute grocery run more than a few times, since I generally plan to use my storage vegetables after all of the more tender veg has been inhaled.

In this recipe, the beets are tossed with lime juice, coriander and pepper. The cabbage is drizzled with tamari, maple and chili flakes. Both get a hit of toasted sesame oil. And then they roast until they're tender and sweet.

The beets and cabbage are amazing as-is. But I decided to make a salad out of the combination by throwing together the cabbage and beets with chickpeas, watercress, macadamia nuts, sunflower seeds, more lime juice and a drizzle of sunflower seed butter.

I like to eat my serving of this salad with a lot more watercress than pictured (I just love watercress!). And sometimes I go for peanut butter instead of sunflower butter. Both are delicious.

This recipe was inspired by Floating Kitchen's roasted cabbage wedges and Laura's use of citrus in her new book The First Mess Cookbook. So shout out to those two amazing ladies for being top notch humans!

If you make this recipe, let me know! And hey if you post about it on the internets use the hashtag #willfrolicforfood and tag me @willfrolicforfood so I can see!

Warm Red Cabbage and Beet Salad with Chickpeas, Tamari and Lime

Created by Renee on March 10, 2017

This 30 minute one-pan meal is intensely colorful and flavorful!

• Prep Time: 10m

• Cook Time: 20m

• Total Time: 30m

• Serves: 4

Ingredients

Lime-Pepper Beets

• 3 fist-sized beets

• 1 lime

• 2 teaspoons toasted sesame oil / sunflower oil

• 3/4 teaspoon sea salt

• 1/2 teaspoon whole coriander, freshly ground

• 1/2 teaspoon black pepper

Tamari-Maple Cabbage

• 1 smallish purple cabbage

• 3 teaspoons toasted sesame oil / sunflower oil

• 2 tablespoons tamari

• 1 teaspoon maple syrup

• 1/4 teaspoon red chili flakes OR chipotle chili flakes + plus more to taste

• 1/4 teaspoon sea salt

• 1/4 teaspoon black pepper, ground

Purple Haze Roasted Cabbage Beet Salad

• Roasted Lime-Pepper Beets

• Roasted Tamari-Maple Cabbage

• 1 can chickpeas (2 cups cooked)

• 1/4 cup macadamia nuts or seeds/nuts of choice

• 3 tablespoons creamy sunflower seed butter or peanut butter

• reserved 1/2 lime

• more salt + pepper, to taste

• watercress or fresh torn basil, to garnish

Instructions

1. Preheat the oven to 375F. Line one medium and one large baking sheet with parchment paper.

Lime Pepper Beets

1. Peel the beets, then cut them into 1/2” thick wedges (about 16 wedges per beet). Add the raw beet wedges to your medium-sized baking sheet, then toss with juice of 1/2 lime, 2 tsp toasted sesame oil, 3/4 tsp salt, 1/2 tsp ground coriander, 1/2 tsp ground pepper. Reserve the other 1/2 lime for composing the salad. Spread the beets out over the baking sheet in one layer.

Tamari-Maple Cabbage

1. Cut off the thick base of the cabbage at the bottom and discard. Remove any wilting outer cabbage leaves. Cut the cabbage into 1/2” thick wedges (if they fall apart a bit that’s fine). Add the cabbage to the large baking sheet in one layer, taking care not to overlap the wedges at all. Drizzle evenly with 3 teaspoons oil, 2 tablespoons tamari and 1 tsp maple syrup. Evenly distribute the 1/4 tsp chili flakes (plus more to taste), 1/4 tsp salt and 1/4 tsp ground pepper over the wedges.

Get cooking!

1. Place the beets on the middle rack of the oven, and the cabbage on the bottom rack. Roast for 10 minutes, then rotate the pans from bottom to top and top to bottom. Roast 10 minutes more. The beets and cabbage will be fork-tender when done. Remove and let cool for 5 minutes before handling.

Purple Haze Roasted Salad with Chickpea

1. Spoon the roasted beets over top of the pan of roasted cabbage. Then add the chickpeas and macadamia nuts (or nut/seed of your choice). Squeeze juice of the reserved 1/2 of the lime over it all. Drizzle sunflower seed butter over top. Add watercress / basil leaves, to your liking as a tasty garnish. Taste and adjust salt + pepper, as you like. Serve right out of the pan!