Salat vinegret is a traditional Eastern European pickled vegetable salad. This bright and beautiful salad is a simple and delicious side dish.
My husband’s family comes from the Caucasus mountains. His mother was a fantastic cook and enjoyed making all the traditional family recipes. Her borscht recipe is one of the best around… but it takes a whole day to make! In comparison, this salat vinegret is much simpler.
Swapping the Ingredients
Salat vinegret is the perfect salad for the winter months as it features many cold-weather vegetables. And it was traditionally made with whatever was available. Here are a few variations that we’ve enjoyed.
- Swap the green peas for chopped green apples.
- Don’t include potatoes
- Mix and match the vegetables
- Add a ton of pickled or fermented vegetables
In fact, as far as I can tell… the only rule for a salat vinegret is that it must contain beets!
Probiotic salad
I originally added this recipe to Fermenting For Foodies as a way of reusing beets that had been fermented into immune-boosting kvass, salty beet kvass, or sweet beet kvass.
I love making kvass in the winter. It’s one of my favorite ways to serve beets! And this salad is the perfect way to serve the beautiful fermented cubes of beets after the kvass is finished brewing.
Even if you don’t have a batch of kvass, add some other fermented vegetables to give this salad a probiotic boost!
Salat Vinegret
Salat vinegret is an Eastern European beet and potato salad that features pickled vegetables. It is a colorful, flavor-packed alternative to typical potato salads.
- Prep Time: 15 minutes
- Cook Time: 30 minutes
- Total Time: 45 minutes
- Yield: Serves 4-6 1x
- Category: Salad
- Cuisine: Ukrainian
- Diet: Vegan
Ingredients
Salad
- 3 large potatoes (don’t add extra potatoes or the salad will be too dry)
- 3 medium-sized beets
- 3 medium-sized carrots
- 2 Tbsp of finely diced white onion
- 1 cup of green peas (either fresh or frozen)
- 3 large cucumber pickles
Dressing
- 2 Tbsp olive oil
- 2 Tbsp fresh parsley
- 1/2 tsp salt, to taste
- 1/2 tsp freshly ground black pepper
Instructions
- This recipe was designed to use pickled vegetables. If you have pickled carrots, beets, or onion, don’t add them until the end.
- Dice the potatoes and beets into bite-sized cubes. Place them in a small saucepan of water.
- Bring to a boil, reduce the heat and simmer until the potatoes are tender (about 15 minutes). Drain and set aside to cool.
- Finely dice the carrots and onion. Add them to the hot potatoes to cook slightly in the residual heat.
- Add the salad dressing ingredients to the potatoes. Toss to combine. Then add the green peas and pickled vegetables.
- Stir everything to combine. Taste and add salt, if needed. It amount of salt will depend on the saltiness of the pickles.
- Cover with a lid and store in the refrigerator. Allow the salad to marinate for at least 30 minutes before serving.
Notes
- Salat vinegret is perfect for featuring all sorts of pickled and fermented vegetables. See the section above for some options.
- If you don’t have pickled cucumbers, feel free to add 1/2 cup of sauerkraut instead.
Keywords: vegan, gluten free, dairy free, egg free, potato salad, Russian, winter, fall, spring, Easter
This is amazing! Very flavourful!
★★★★★
In Finland we have a version of this, with
equal amounts of cooked beets (pickled can be used, but are not traditional), carrots and potato served with raw onions, winter apples, salty fermented (or nowadays often pickled) curcumbers and traditionally also salted (or pickled) herring. Everything is cut in similar sized cubes. Nowadays one rarely sees this with herring anymore.
It can be served either all mixed together or espesially if served with herring with all vegetables served on their own,and mixed together by the eaters on their own plates.
It is either called Rosolli or traditionally also herring salad.
It is a very traditional Christmas season food, that might have originally also been harvest season food.
It is usually served with ‘kermaviili’ wich is femented milk product that is kind of creamy but runny yoghurt. It is made of light cream with mesophilic viili-culture. It is often colored pink with beet cooking juice before serving it with Rosolli.
So interesting! Thanks for sharing.