Mexican Salads Made Easy

!±8± Mexican Salads Made Easy

After a long day of work, the last thing you want to do is slave over the stove for hours to serve a delicious meal, never the less a delicious and healthy meals. Most people are seeking quick and easy meals to prepare in a short amount of time after a long day of work. Salads are a great healthy meal that can be made in a pinch.

You can easily make a salad by tossing together lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers, and onions topped with your favorite salad dressing. Bacon and almonds make great salad toppers. If you would like to add a Mexican flare to your typical house salad, try adding sliced avocado, olives, peppers, black beans, and corn to your salad topped with homemade salsa. No matter what you have in your refrigerator, chances are, you can throw together a salad with whatever is on hand.

Roasted Beet And Jicama Salad With Jalapeno Dressing

This is a very easy recipe that anyone can prepare. This recipe will give you bragging rights for the wonderfully flavored salad dressing. The pairing of jicama and beets goes great alongside the jalapeno and peanut salad dressing. If you are in a rush, this recipe can be made in advance and can be refrigerated up to a day ahead. If making ahead, you can serve this salad chilled.

If you love south of the border flavors and feel like kicking this recipe up a notch, try substituting a Serrano pepper for the jalapeno pepper or add 2 peppers to really make this recipe hot and spicy.

What You Need:

1 pound small beets 1 medium white onion ½ cup zesty Italian salad dressing 1 jalapeno pepper 1/3 cup dry roasted peanuts 2 tablespoons lime juice 1 medium jicama 2 tablespoons chopped cilantro 1 lime

How To Make It:

Cut onion and lime into wedges. Stem the jalapeno. Peel jicama and cut into 2-inch sticks.

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Gently wash beets and pat dry. Pierce beets in several places with a fork.

Place beets and onions in center of a large sheet of aluminum foil. Drizzle beets and onions with 2 tablespoons of salad dressing. Bring up foil sides, double fold top and bring both ends up to seal foil packet. Be sure to leave room inside foil packet so that heat can circulate.

Place on 15x10 baking pan. Bake 45 minutes or until beets are tender. Remove from oven and let stand 5 minutes. Cut slit into foil packet to release steam before opening the packet. Let beets stand in foil until cooled.

To peel beets, gently rub skins with cloth or paper towel until all of the skins are removed. Cut the beets into wedges and set aside.

In a blender, combine jalapeno pepper, remaining salad dressing, ¼ cup of peanuts and lime juice. Cover and blend until smooth. Set this mixture aside.

Arrange jicama on a serving platter. Top with beets and onion mixture. Drizzle with salad dressing mixture. Sprinkle cilantro and remaining chopped peanuts on top of salad.

Serve garnished with lime wedges.