Spinach Salad with Beet Pickled Eggs

Brighten up your dinner table with this vibrant Spring Spinach Salad. It features fresh baby spinach greens, pickled eggs and beets with a delicious vinaigrette salad dressing. It’s the perfect make ahead salad for potlucks, dinner parties, brunches, and holiday dinners.

Spring is a time for renewal and fresh starts. Our family enjoys the warmer weather and we crave flavourful salads like Snap Pea Salad with Feta Salad and Strawberry Spinach Salad.

Spring Spinach Salad with Pickled Eggs and Beets

Though you can find all of the ingredients for this spinach salad year round, I tend to think of it as a Spring Salad. It’s become a family tradition to serve this fun salad for Easter dinner. However, it would be great for any potluck or dinner party because you can make all the components ahead of time and compose it just before meal time.

The fuschia tinted eggs are the highlight of this salad. They look stunning and are sour and salty, with just a touch of sweetness. Since the eggs are pickled in a jar along with the beets, they absorb the natural fuschia dye and earthy flavour.

Switching Up a Classic Spinach Salad

Google spinach salad recipes and you’ll find a variety of salads with toppings ranging from cranberries and goat cheese to mandarin oranges with almonds. You can even make spinach salad a full meal but topping it with grilled chicken.

Besides the pickled eggs and beets, there are finely chopped shallots in the dressing. The salad dressing is a pretty standard vinaigrette. It contains a stunning rosé wine vinegar, olive oil, salt, pepper, Dijon mustard and garlic.

The spinach salad recipe is certainly not difficult but you do have to make it a day ahead of time.  This makes it a perfect ‘make ahead’ dish for your Easter feast. It really comes together quickly after the initial pickling process. When you’re hosting dinner for the whole family, any recipe made ahead of time is a winner!

Salad Ingredients

This beauty of a salad is full of simple healthy ingredients. Every component is fresh and the vinaigrette is made from scratch. When a vinaigrette is so easy to make, there’s no need to buy it from a store.

• Baby Spinach
• Beets
• Eggs
• Water
• Sugar
• White Vinegar
• Celery Seed
• Mustard Seeds
• Shallots
• Dijon Mustard
• Honey
• White or Rosé Wine Vinegar
• Olive Oil
• Salt
• Pepper
• Garlic
• Fresh Chives

While this is essentially a Spinach Salad, adding other greens or using a Spring salad mix would also work. Try massaged kale, frisée, red or green leaf lettuce or butter letter in place of the baby spinach.

Small red beets work the best in this recipe. They cook quickly and will absorb more of the brine than larger beets. Try switching the red beets for yellow beets for naturally yellow dyed eggs.

Shallots are a classic vinaigrette ingredient however you can use finely diced red onions in their place. If the red onions are quite strong, dice them and soak them in cold water for 10-15 minutes.

Dijon mustard is one of those ‘classic’ additions to French vinaigrettes. It adds a little more zip to the overall flavour and aids in emulsification of the oil and vinegar.

I found the beautiful pink rosé wine vinegar at Costco and knew it would be perfect for vinaigrettes. If you make your own Chive Blossom Vinegar you can use that too. Or, you can use regular white wine vinegar or even a white balsamic vinegar.

Lastly, please use your best Olive oil in this dressing. Since it makes up the bulk of the vinaigrette, it’s important to use a full flavour olive oil.

How to Make a Classic Vinaigrette

The vinaigrette recipe for this salad is very basic. To make it, simply add the rosé wine vinegar, olive oil, salt, pepper, shallots, Dijon mustard, and garlic to a small mason jar.

It’s much easier (and cleaner) to shake the dressing than to whisk it together in a bowl. Screw the lid on tightly and shake the ingredients until they are entirely emulsified.

If you like, you can add finely chopped fresh herbs for a more intense flavour.

How to Make Beet Pickled Eggs

As you can see from the photos, there is quite a large ring of beet dye around the eggs. To achieve this, I boiled up the simple brine and allowed it to cool to room temperature.

Next, I cooked the eggs in an instant pot for five minutes on high pressure then allowed them to sit for 5 minutes before releasing the pressure.

Then I also cooked whole beets in the instant pot under high pressure for 15 minutes. When a fork easy slides into the beets, they are ready to pickle.

Peel and cut the beets in half, then place them and the peeled eggs, along with the cooled brine in a large mason jar. Cover and place the jar of eggs and beets in the fridge for 24 – 28 hours. Less pickling time would give you a thinner ring of pink.

If you make this Spinach Salad with Beet Pickled Eggs, please be sure to leave a comment and/or give this recipe a rating! Be sure to follow me on Facebook and Pinterest for my latest recipes. Also, if you do make this recipe, please tag me on Instagram, I’d love to see what you guys are making! Thank you so much for reading my blog.

Adapted from: Ricardo Cuisine Magazine