Grilled watermelon salad with Goat cheese and beets is a sweet-spicy salad. It is easy to make. Add Sun-gold tomatoes to make it more colorful and healthy.
Love at first sight is a very real thing, I have discovered! Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.
I fell in love with this watermelon the moment I set my eyes on it! I saw it from far, sitting by itself in the watermelon stand, just waiting for someone to carry it away. I made a beeline in that direction and my hands grabbed it, eagerly, like they were going out of style.
Yes, I picked it up and hurriedly carried it away! Didn’t want anyone else to take it.
Even though it is called a baby watermelon, it was heavy to carry. But I barely noticed that. All I could think was that the best watermelon falls into one’s lap when they are least expecting it.
Already, my mind was conjuring up thousands of recipes and wondering what kind of cheese will go best with it, what kind of tomato will best offset this melon, and so on…. I talk to many professional and amateur chefs about what inspires them. The common answer they give is that it takes just one ingredient and all their creative cooking brain cells awaken to form a recipe. I think that is what happened to me when I saw this gorgeous melon.
A while back, I had seen a recipe where the watermelon was grilled after being brushed with a pepper jelly. This would be the perfect time to try that recipe. I went around the supermarket and gathered up all the other ingredients that I thought would go perfect with this recipe.
The Grilled Watermelon Salad was now ready to be made into a delicious creation.
The Sun Gold cherry tomato would be the perfect color offset with this melon.
Beets add a darker red to it, salad greens will be the perfect green bed and Goat cheese will be the perfect strong taste to offset the sweet melon.
When this salad came together, I couldn’t believe how great it tasted (I brag ever so humbly!). The melon, when grilled with the pepper jelly, was the perfect blend of sweet and spicy. Add to it, the goat cheese and it was like I was in heaven!
The beets are the only thing that takes long to prepare. Everything else comes together instantly. I grilled the watermelon on a Panini maker. My grill decided that it wanted to go on strike after the last time I tried to grill too many persimmon tomatoes. Now that I know what its limitations are, I will be careful.
We go through a lot of watermelon in my home! The favorite recipe is using it in my watermelon curry. We also add it to water to bring for cleansing recipes. In the summer, watermelon makes for a delicious cool down granita recipe.
Want to grow your own watermelons? Wikihow shows you how to grow the perfect watermelon
Grilled Watermelon Salad with Goat Cheese and Beets
Ingredients
- 4 slices watermelon cut into triangle shapes
- 3 beets medium sized
- 2 cups cherry tomatoes I used yellow cherry tomatoes
- 1/2 cup Pepper Jelly You can add pepper flakes to regular jelly
- 1/4 cup goat cheese cut into pieces
- 2 cups mixed greens
- 2 tsp Balsamic vinaigrette
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 375 degrees
- Preheat grill
- If you don’t have pepper jelly, take regular jelly and add pepper flakes
- Wrap beets in foil and place on baking tray.
- Placed wrapped beets into the oven and let cook for 45minutes to 1 hour.
- At about 25 minutes in, turn over the beets in the baking tray
- Remove the beets from the oven and remove from foil.
- Let cool for about 10 minutes and then peel the skin
- Brush the watermelon slices with the pepper jelly and place on grill.
- Grill both sides of the watermelon. You can also use a stove top grill
- Remove the watermelon and place aside
- Cut the beets into bite size shapes and place on the grill.
- Brush some pepper jelly on the beets
- Grill the tomatoes just long enough to see the skin tighten.
- In the salad plate, place the greens first
- Place 2 grilled watermelons per plate
- Add the tomatoes and beets to the salad plate
- Divide the goat cheese for each plate and place it on top of the salad
- Drizzle Pomegranate Balsamic vinegar on the salad and serve immediately
The use of pepper jelly here is so incredibly, deliciously intriguing! Oh, and then to drizzle this whole beautiful creation with pomegranate balsamic … wonderful! What a lovely salad! 😀
Thank you, Shelley
What a great idea for using watermelon!
Thank you, Kristin.
That’s absolutely beautiful. I thought I was the only one who had food call out to them in the market.
Thank you, Michelle. Glad to know that I am not the only one who is “crazy” 🙂
Beautiful indeed! Now I want to try beets and watermelon together. What a great combination of fresh ingredients!
Thank you, Sandra
I love grilled watermelon. I first tried it this summer. This salad looks like a great alternative to the same old same salad!
Thank you, Christine. It is definitely on the light side, so, it goes great in any season.
What a fun salad idea! I’ve never grilled watermelon, but I can imagine it really brings out the flavors- especially with the pepper jelly added!
Thank you, Jamie. It was a lot of fun and I can’t wait to try it again this summer.
Beets and goat cheese are a match made in heaven (I also believe in love at first site!) and I think the addition of the watermelon sounds perfect! Can’t wait to give this one a try!
Thank you, Debra. You will really like it.
believe it or not I have a watermelon sitting on my counter right now…making this right away!
Thank you, Theresa! Let me know how it turns out.
I love it. It looks like a good alternative to my favorite vegetable salad.
Thank you, Jennifer. It is definitely a good alternate to the “House Salad”.