Skip to main content

Fall Harvest Salad with Butternut Squash, Brussels Sprouts, and Beets


I created this for a Thanksgiving 2012 get-together, wanting to focus on hearty fall garden veggies. It was a big hit at the table!

One small Butternut squash, cut into cubes (or half of a medium squash)
20 Brussels Sprouts, cleaned and cut in half
One small beet, cut in halves or quarters
3-4 slices of bacon, fried crisp, drained and cooled, broken into small pieces
One smallish head Romaine lettuce, split into quarters and chopped chunky
3-4 smaller leaves of kale, washed and torn into bite-sized pieces
2 green onions, sliced thin
1/2 cup walnuts or pecans
½ cup dried cranberries
¼ cup Grated Parmesan cheese
Brown sugar
Honey
Salt
Vegetable or olive oil
Balsamic or Red Wine vinegar
Coarse black pepper

Toss Butternut Squash cubes in a little oil in a bowl to coat them and spread on a baking sheet. Roast at 400 degrees for about 15 minutes (depending on the size of your chunks) or until nearly done. Return to bowl and add about 1/3 cup brown sugar and a pat or two of butter, toss to blend and melt butter, return to baking sheet and roast for about 10 more minutes, or until just barely tender all the way through. Don’t over-cook – you don’t want them mushy. Return to bowl to cool. Chill before mixing.

Toss Brussels Sprout halves in a little oil in a bowl to coat, and spread on a baking sheet. Roast at 400 degrees for about 10 minutes, remove and toss/turn over, and roast for several more minutes, until they are nearly tender – again, don’t over-cook. Better that they be a little crunchy in the salad than not. Return to bowl to cool. Chill before mixing.

Beet can be roasted or steamed until just tender. If you prefer roasting, cut it in half or quarters and roast with the Brussels Sprouts, then slice into small julienne strips after it cools.  Chill before mixing

Put dried cranberries in a small bowl and sprinkle lightly with a little of the balsamic vinegar. They will absorb a little of the liquid and not be so chewy, and they will absorb the flavor. Once the cranberries are tossed and coated with the vinegar and have absorbed for a few minutes, you can add them to the roasted squash while it continues to cool.

Toss nuts in a little honey and toast in a slow oven (250 degrees or so), for about 10 minutes. Watch carefully, as nuts will overheat and burn, especially with the sugar from the honey on them. Cool completely.

Put chopped/torn greens and sliced green onion into a large salad bowl. Add the Bacon, Cranberries, chilled Squash, Brussels Sprouts, and julienned Beet, and honey-toasted nuts. Sprinkle with some coarse black pepper (to taste) and Parmesan cheese. Add the Brown Sugar Balsamic Vinaigrette to taste. Toss lightly before serving.

Brown Sugar Balsamic Vinaigrette
¼ cup balsamic vinegar (or red wine vinegar)
¾ cup vegetable oil
¼ tsp. salt (maybe a little more)
½ cup brown sugar (or a little more)

Blend ingredients in jar with a tight cover that can be shaken well.  Add enough salt to balance the sweet. The measurements for this dressing are estimates, as I was just adding and mixing. May have actually had a little more brown sugar. Taste until you like the balance of tang to sweet.

This jar of dressing will probably dress at least twice, if not 3x the salad ingredients listed above. Store unused dressing in the refrigerator.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Leftover Thanksgiving Turkey - fun with Corn Chowder!

Many of you who know us know we usually make Turkey Pot Pies (see the recipe on our blog) with leftover Thanksgiving goodies. We still love Turkey Pot Pie, but we still have so many from last year (an even bigger bird than this year!), we decided we would do other things with this year's leftover turkey (we roasted a 33# bird from the flock we raised). So I made a Turkey Corn Chowder that is savory and yummy out of part of the leftovers. Here's how it came to be: Finished Turkey Corn Chowder First, right after Thanksgiving, I put the turkey carcass, from which most of the large meat pieces had been removed, into our 22-quart stock pot, along with some carrot, onion, and celery, to make turkey stock. When the stock was done simmering, I had pulled the carcass bones and all the meat that had cooked off out of the pot, picking out bones from the meat. I had about 2 quarts of small chunks and bits of turkey, most of which was the very tender, sweet meat that is around t
Post a Comment
Read more

Big turkeys from our farm - happy customers at Thanksgiving!

Well, our turkey raising experiment this year went well - probably a little too well. We had a lot of orders for birds in the 15 - 25# range and our smallest bird was over 21#. They REALLY thrived out in the pasture. We plan to raise more next year, but probably start them somewhat later (these birds were 22 weeks old) and manage their feeding protocol a little differently. We used the two biggest birds - 41.25# and a whopping 41.90# guy . . . whew! Darrell had written an informational piece about " How to Handle Roasting a Big Turkey ", and I had some of those big disposable roasting pans to give to people who feared their regular roaster wouldn't cut it. So, several of our customers shared their story of what they did with the bird and send some photos. There're also photos at the end of what we did with the two monsters. Leah C. sent these photos and a note about their experience. She had been leery of doing a big bird, so Darrell's instructions and
1 comment
Read more

The blessings of friends

Today we rented a huge wood chipper and had sent an email to everyone who had offered to help with cleanup. We needed to clean up a downed tree and tons of branches that were between our house and the pasture so that the professional tree people can take down the hazardous still-standing tree parts, and get the branches off the deck, which is what our insurance will pay for . . . all the rest is our problem. 32 people from 4 counties turned out at our farm today - some for 2 or 3 hours, some all day. Some were neighbors, some were people we work with, people from Barbershop who Darrell sings with, people we know through other affiliations, a cousin, her daughter and grandson and their friends - I'm completely awed by how hard everyone worked, in spite of the heat and brutal humidity. And even more amazing is what we accomplished with a Bobcat, a Kubota tractor with a bucket, chain saws, and just plain hard work feeding that monster chipper. Here's a photo of our side yard &
2 comments
Read more