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The everyday composed plate of the central highlands: cooked beet, crisp jicama, and orange segments with grated carrot, dressed only in lime, salt, and chile piquin. Recetas probadas y garantizadas, and the kind of plate that puts color on a weeknight table without asking for much.
This is a salad from the central highlands, from the kitchens of the Bajio and the valley of Mexico, where jicama grows abundantly, where citrus arrives by the crate from Veracruz, and where the beet, an immigrant ingredient that quietly settled into the Mexican home kitchen in the 19th century, became the most affordable way to put real color on a weeknight plate. You will see this salad on a table in Queretaro, in Guanajuato, in the Distrito Federal, in Puebla. It is a household salad, not a restaurant salad. That is what gives it its dignity.
The whole dish costs less than a kilo of pork and feeds six people. That is the point. La cocina no es decoracion, es trabajo, and this plate is the working cook's answer to what to put on the table when the budget is tight and the children still need to eat well. Beet for sweetness and body, jicama for crunch, orange for brightness, carrot for color, lime for sharpness, salt for backbone, chile piquin for the warm bite at the back of the throat. Nothing else. No olive oil. No vinegar. No mayonnaise. Adding those things turns a Mexican salad into something it is not.
My mother made this constantly when I was small, especially in the cold months when the Mexican navel oranges from Veracruz arrived in the markets and the beets were cheap. She kept a small clay bowl of chile piquin on the table with a tiny spoon, and we would dust our own bowls to taste. Cada estado, su propia cocina, but this one belongs to the central highlands, and it belongs to the abuelas who knew how to feed a family on what the mercado was selling that morning. Saber cocinar es saber vivir.
The beet (betabel in Mexican Spanish, from the Catalan 'bleda-rave') arrived in Mexico with European immigration in the 19th century and was rapidly absorbed into the highland home kitchen, where it became a staple of the ensalada de Nochebuena alongside jicama, apple, peanut, and pomegranate. Jicama (Pachyrhizus erosus) is indigenous to Mexico and Central America and was cultivated by the Maya and Mexica long before the conquest; its name comes from the Nahuatl 'xicamatl,' meaning watery root. The combination of cooked beet, raw jicama, and citrus dressed with chile and lime, served as a daily salad rather than a holiday composition, became standardized across central Mexico during the post-revolutionary period when home cooking magazines and the cookbooks of writers like Josefina Velazquez de Leon codified everyday recipes for the urban middle class.
Quantity
3 medium (about 1 1/2 pounds)
tops trimmed but skin on
Quantity
1 medium (about 1 pound)
peeled
Quantity
3 large
Quantity
2 medium
peeled
Quantity
1/4
sliced into very thin half-moons
Quantity
1/4 cup (about 3 to 4 Mexican limes)
Quantity
1 teaspoon, plus more to taste
Quantity
2 teaspoons
ground (plus more for the table)
Quantity
1/4 cup
torn
Quantity
for serving
| Ingredient | Quantity |
|---|---|
| red beetstops trimmed but skin on | 3 medium (about 1 1/2 pounds) |
| jicamapeeled | 1 medium (about 1 pound) |
| navel oranges | 3 large |
| carrotspeeled | 2 medium |
| small red onionsliced into very thin half-moons | 1/4 |
| fresh lime juice | 1/4 cup (about 3 to 4 Mexican limes) |
| kosher salt | 1 teaspoon, plus more to taste |
| chile piquinground (plus more for the table) | 2 teaspoons |
| fresh cilantro leavestorn | 1/4 cup |
| Tajin (optional) | for serving |
Place the whole beets in a saucepan with the skin still on. Cover with cold water by two inches and add a generous pinch of salt. Bring to a simmer over medium heat and cook for 35 to 45 minutes, until a paring knife slides easily into the center. Cook them whole and with the skin on. Peeled, cubed beets bleed all their color and flavor into the water and you end up with pink water and pale beets. That is backwards.
Drain the beets and run them under cold water for a minute until you can handle them. The skins will slip off under your thumb. Use a paper towel to rub them clean. Cut into half-inch dice. Your hands will turn pink. That is the dish telling you it is a beet salad.
Stand the peeled jicama on a cutting board and slice into half-inch planks, then cut the planks into half-inch sticks. Jicama is for crunch. Cut it too small and it disappears into the beet. Cut it the same size as the beet dice so every forkful has both.
Cut a slice off the top and bottom of each orange so they sit flat. Stand one on the board and cut down the sides with a sharp knife, following the curve, removing the peel and all the white pith. Hold the peeled orange over a bowl and slice between the membranes to release each segment. Squeeze the spent membranes over the bowl to catch the juice. That juice goes into the dressing. No me vengas con atajos. Canned mandarins are not oranges.
Grate the carrots on the large holes of a box grater. You want fluffy ribbons, not a wet pulp. Slice the red onion into the thinnest half-moons your knife will give you. Drop the onion into the bowl with the reserved orange juice while you work. The acid takes the harsh edge off the onion in about five minutes.
In a large clay bowl or wide ceramic platter, layer the beets, jicama, orange segments, and grated carrot. Lift the onion out of the orange juice and scatter it on top. Pour the reserved orange juice and the lime juice over everything. Add the salt and one teaspoon of the chile piquin. Toss gently with two spoons. Not aggressively. You are mixing, not mashing. The beets will streak the jicama pink and that is correct. Anyone who serves this with the beets walled off in their own corner does not understand the dish.
Scatter the torn cilantro over the top and dust with the remaining teaspoon of chile piquin. Taste a bite of beet and a bite of jicama. The salad should be sharply sour, lightly salty, sweet from the orange, and only warm with the chile, not aggressive. Adjust the salt and lime before it leaves the kitchen. Set the salad on the table with extra chile piquin and a small dish of Tajin so each person can dust their own bowl. Eat within the hour. The jicama loses its crunch as it sits. Asi se hace y punto.
1 serving (about 290g)
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