Add Canned Beets To Your Next Potato Salad For A Pop Of Color

A wealth of potato salad recipes exist that run the gamut from creamy mayonnaise-based to tangy and light oil-based salads. The star of the show is boiled potatoes, often accompanied by hard-boiled eggs, pickled vegetables, and crunchy raw aromatics like celery and diced onions. While a bit of green from the herbs or a sprinkle of red paprika seasoning might shine through, potato salad has a rather monochromatic presentation. Canned beets add a pop of crimson as vibrant as its rich sweet flavor.

Canned beets are a convenient ingredient with a long shelf life and come pre-sliced into rounds, saving you the effort of preparing them from scratch. Due to their soft, tender consistency, popular ways to use canned beets involve blending them into smoothies, dips, or even cake batters. However, their tender bite will add a comforting textural enhancement to pillowy boiled potatoes. As a root vegetable, beets also contain heft and an earthy richness that mirrors potatoes.

Their sweetness provides a unique and delectable compliment to the savory earthiness of potatoes along with spicy aromatics or the tanginess of vinegar or mustard in both oil or mayo-based dressings. Adding them to a potato salad is simple; after draining them of their canning liquid, dice them into small cubes or matchsticks before throwing them into a bowl with boiled sliced potatoes and all the other ingredients your potato salad recipe specifies before adding the dressing and tossing to coat.

Read more: 23 Types Of Potatoes And When To Use Them

Ideas For Complementary Ingredients In A Beet Potato Salad

Beets will bleed into the potato salad, imparting a pink hue to the white potato or creamy dressing. The beets themselves will retain their deep crimson hue, contrasting with the light pink potatoes. Their sweetness is a novelty to conventional potato salad recipes, but their soft and tender texture isn't dissimilar to potatoes. Therefore, you'll want to look for ingredients that contrast both the sweetness of the beets as well as the textural uniformity of beets and potatoes.Both spicy and tangy flavors will compliment the sweetness of the beets while also cutting through the richness of the potatoes. The easiest way to contrast the sweetness with tanginess is to use a vinegar-heavy dressing like the one used in this French potato salad recipe or add Dijon mustard to your mayonnaise-based dressing. You could also swap mayonnaise for sour yogurt or use a blend of mayo and sour cream. Diced pickles or relish add a sour flavor complement and a crunchy textural contrast to beets and potatoes. Diced pickled jalapeños or raw red onion add a spicy kick and a pleasant crunch to potato salad. Green peas are another canned or frozen staple that'll bring a pop of green for color contrast and a chewy textural variant.

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