I love beets. Loooooove them. My husband thinks they – quite literally – taste like dirt, but I think they taste sweet and yes… a little earthy, but utterly delicious. I don’t need to do anything more than roast them or grate them raw into a salad to enjoy them, but if you’re looking to dress them up a bit, this Russian Beet Salad is the way to do it. Paired with a creamy dressing and fragrant, bright dill, it just might turn those beet haters right around.

Now, our recipe instructs you to boil the beets to start out, and while that’s certainly the quickest way to go about getting them fork tender, you can also use roasted beets you might have leftover – it’ll work just as well. Pickled beets, however, would be a stretch… but I digress. Once your beets are cooked through, you’ll chill them – like revenge, this is a dish best served cold.

The dressing is super simple – mayo and sour cream mixed together with some garlic powder, onion powder, celery seed, and a generous handful of fresh dill fronds. I also happen to love dill, and luckily beets and dill are bosom companions so they play together so very well in this creamy salad.

It’s a simple side, but it brings out the best in the beets. The creamy dressing mingles with that sweet beet flavor while the grassy dill balances out their earthiness. There are a hundred-and-one things you can do with a beet – make it into chips, pickle it, roast it, grate it raw for a slaw, make it into hummus… but this salad is one technique that shouldn’t be missed.