If you’re like me and crave more raw, juicy vegetables and fruit as spring settles in, you might enjoy this sunny salad. It’s heavily inspired by French carrot salad, just with more stuff added in, and also reminds me of a grated carrot dish from childhood. It’s also as simple as can be. The dressing is a basic, lemony vinaigrette, which gets mixed with raw grated carrots, cooked lentils, and parsley.
You can watch a step-by-step video of me making the salad on instagram, here. A tip: a food processor with a grating attachment (I have this one and love it) makes the job of grating the carrots a breeze, if you happen to have one. Hope you’ll get around to trying the salad!
Carrot and Lentil Salad
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Serves: 4-6
Ingredients
- 1 shallot, minced
- 2-3 tbsp lemon juice, or more to taste
- 1 tsp Dijon mustard
- 1-2 tsp sugar or honey, or more to taste (optional)
- sea salt
- freshly ground black pepper
- ¼ cup olive oil
- 1½ lbs/680 g carrots (the younger and smaller, the better), grated
- 1 cup cooked French or black lentils
- handful of parsley, minced
Instructions
- In a salad bowl, combine the shallot, lemon juice, mustard, sugar/honey if using, salt, and pepper to taste, whisk until smooth. Slowly stream in the olive oil while whisking, until emulsified.
- Add the carrots, lentils, and parsley to the bowl, mix to coat everything in the dressing. Taste for salt, sugar, and lemon juice (this step is important, as all carrots vary in flavor), adjust if needed. Enjoy the salad at room temperature or cold.
Could this be made with Rainbow carrots? White, purple, red, etc? Or is orange best?
Bee — give it a shot! What do you have to lose?
Hello! Yes, any carrots would work.