Fresh figs can elevate the simplest of dishes, including salad. Take advantage, and enjoy the best of season with a celebratory fig salad paired with savory beets, walnuts, raspberries, and a tangy balsamic vinagirette to tie it all together.
Fresh figs are glorious. They an also weigh on the pricier side of fruit. If you can find them, I think they are best served fresh, rather than cooked. Why? They are already kind of mushy to begin with and cooking accentuates their mushiness.
Fresh figs are often paired with cheese or prosciutto.
Serve this vegan salad with a butternut squash apple soup or beans and greens.
Ingredients
- Fresh Figs - Available in the summer and more heavily towards late summer, they are purple jewels to be savored if you can find them.
- Choose plump figs that yield slightly to the touch. They should not be completely mushy.
- Store in the refrigerator in a single layer, to avoid bruising.
- Substitute with dried figs soaked in hot water to help rehydrate them.
- Beets - Buy precooked and peeled beets to save time. Otherwise, fresh, whole beets can be roasted in the oven at 350 degrees oven for about an hour until they can be pierced easily with a paring knife. Peel, once they have cooled. They can also be peeled, chopped, and roasted in on a sheet pan with some olive oil.
- Arugula - This peppery salad green is a chef's favorite. Its leaves are pretty and go well with just about everything. Substitute with salad greens of your choice.
- Aged Balsamic Vinegar - The best balsamic vinegar comes from Modena, Italy and aged balsamic vinegar is even sweeter, thicker, and tastier. Substitute with regular balasamic vinegar and a little sweetener, if you don't have this.
See recipe card for quantities.
Types of Fresh Figs to Try
- Black Mission Figs
- Deep purple to almost black skin, with intensely sweet, jammy flesh.
- The most widely available variety in the U.S.
- Great for eating fresh, roasting, or making jam.
- Kadota Figs
- Pale green to yellow skin with a less-sweet, mild flavor.
- They have a 'lighter' less sweet taste.
- Calimyrna Figs
- Golden-green skin with a nutty, honeyed flavor.
- Larger than most varieties.
- Often dried and paired with nuts.
- Brown Turkey Figs
- Brownish-purple skin, pink-amber flesh.
- Mildly sweet, less intense than Black Mission.
- I find these to be very large and a bit too mushy for my taste.
- Candy Stripe (Panaché or “Tiger”) Figs
- Bright yellow skin streaked with pastel green stripes; interior is deep red.
- Flavor is sweet with a subtle berry-like tang.
- Highly seasonal and rare, usually found at farmers markets.
No cheese needed
Fresh figs are often paired with cheese or served alongside charcuterie on a cheese plate. That's fine, but in those preparations, the fig is not the star, the cheese or meat is.
Chunks of feta cheese or goat cheese might be strewn across the top of a fig salad. That's fine too, but the cheese usually ends up as the dominant flavor because it's so rich.
Leaving the cheese out just means you focus on the fig a little bit more because that will truly be the most exciting item in the salad.
Fig Fun Facts
- Eating half a cup of fresh figs provides as much calcium as half a cup of milk. - Valley Fig Growers
- Figs are actually inverted flowers, not true fruits. Each tiny seed inside is technically a flower.
- Ancient Olympic athletes ate figs for strength, and winners received figs as medals, making them one of the first “Olympic foods”. Valley Fig Growers
- California produces almost all fresh and dried figs sold in the US. - California Figs
Recipe
Fig and Beet Salad (no dairy)
Ingredients
- 3 oz arugula or salad greens of your choice about 6 cups
- 10 oz fresh figs, stem end removed and cut in half about 8-10 each
- 3 oz cooked beets, cut in 1-2" dice cut into quarters, about 1 medium beet
- 1 c raspberries about 2 oz
- ½ c toasted walnuts
Balsamic Vinaigrette
- 4 Tb extra virgin olive oil
- 2 Tb aged balsamic vinegar See Note 1
- ¼ teaspoon salt
Garnish
- freshly ground black pepper
Instructions
- Arrange the arugula or salad greens on a serving platter or large bowl.
- Arrange the figs, beets, raspberries, and walnuts over the salad greens.
- Whisk together the balsamic vinaigrette ingredients. Drizzle all over the arranged salad platter.
- Crack on the fresh black pepper. Toss gently if you wish or leave the salad arranged as is to serve at the table.
Notes
- Substitute with regular balasamic vinegar and a 1-2 teaspoon of sugar, if you don't have aged balsamic vinegar which is sweet and syrupy.
- Fresh, whole beets can be roasted in the oven at 350 degrees oven for about an hour until they can be pierced easily with a paring knife. Peel, once they have cooled. They can also be peeled, chopped, and roasted in on a sheet pan with some olive oil.
- You can make this ahead of time. Store the vinaigrette separately from the salad ingredients in the fridge. Bring the vinaigrette to room temperature before serving, in case it has congealed in the fridge.
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