I should start off by saying that I absolutely hated beets when I was growing up. We didn’t eat them often only because they didn’t quite play a prominent part in the type of South Indian food we ate at home. The funny thing is, I suspect that my hatred for beets was heavily influenced by my older sister who REALLY hated beets and I just did whatever she did. So let’s fast forward several years and here we have one of my favorite salads – with beets! I guess somewhere along the way I gave it a try again and discovered that I actually LOVE beets. Who knew!

Can I use fresh beets?

Why yes! I just don’t because of the convenience of ready to eat cooked beets. You can also use beets stewed in vinaigrette that you can find at the supermarket, but for those, I would use less of the salad dressing as the beets will already be flavored.