This Arugula & Golden Beet Salad with Blood Orange Vinaigrette is bursting with color and flavor!

Anyone else love salads as much as I do? I actually believe that I could eat salad every day for the rest of my life and never get bored. The flavor combinations are endless. For me, the key to a great salad is the perfectly orchestrated combination of colors, textures and flavors. And, this salad in my opinion delivers on all three. This salad is a unique and colorful blend of:

Arugula
Goat Cheese
Golden Beets
Toasted Pumpkin Seeds
Pink Peppercorns

All dressed with a beautiful blood orange vinaigrette.

I used Arugula for the base of this salad, one of my favorite greens hands down. I love it for it’s peppery bite, but if you are not a fan, you could easily substitute spinach. If your feeling adventurous and have never tried it before, you could also use half arugula and half spinach to dial back the spiciness and make it more palatable.

One of the star ingredients in this salad are the roasted golden beets. So so good! A major departure from where I began with this rustic root vegetable. I actually grew up hating beets. Is it just me, or was anyone else tainted by the bad childhood memories of those jars of pickled red beets they had as a kid? For those of you that think beets taste like dirt, golden beets are actually less earthy than their red counterpart. I prefer them to the red when it comes to salads.

Roasting the beets is a game changer. Beets, when roasted become sweeter and take on a very different flavor which can be your gateway into enjoying them if your in the beet hater club. I like to roast up several at a time to have on hand for other salads, grain bowls, etc.

And now to the blood orange vinaigrette. Just look at that beautiful pink color. Blood oranges have a deep ruby red interior and taste similar to an orange. I love to use blood oranges in vinaigrettes and they make a great cocktail too! Oooh a blood orange margarita sounds good right now.

Okay, back to the salad. As always, I like to give you ways you can switch up the ingredients to make the recipe your own. In addition to the swap of the greens, you can use feta cheese in place of the goat cheese if your not a fan. In terms of the pumpkin seeds, those can easily be subbed with toasted walnuts, pecans or even hazelnuts.

I also think some mandarin oranges or some golden raisins would be fabulous in this salad too. The one ingredient that there is no substitute for are the pink peppercorns. If you haven’t had them before, you are in for a treat. Most people do not realize that pink peppercorns actually come from a completely different species of plant than black pepper. They aren’t spicy like black and green peppercorns and have a citrusy, floral flavor, perfect for this salad.

I hope you enjoy this salad. There will be many more salads and dressings to come. If you make this salad or any of the recipes on the blog, be sure to leave a comment below and let me know what you think.