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Three beetroots, boiled whole with the skins still on, sitting in a colander going purple-pink in the steam. That’s where this one starts, most Tuesdays, because it’s the day I pack the lunchboxes for the week and beetroot dip with walnuts and cumin has become the thing that makes the vegetable sticks disappear instead of coming home soggy and untouched.
I didn’t grow up on this combination. It’s a Middle Eastern pairing, really, toasted walnuts and cumin against something sweet and earthy, and once I’d made it a handful of times on the pastry section at a place in Surry Hills years ago, I couldn’t go back to plain hummus for a crudite dip. The colour alone does half the selling to a kid who’s suspicious of beetroot. It looks like something from a cordial bottle, and it tastes nothing like dirt, which is the main objection I hear from people who’ve only had beetroot out of a tin.
Why beetroot and walnuts actually work together
Beetroot on its own can sit a bit flat and sweet, especially once it’s roasted or boiled down soft. Walnuts fix that. They bring a bitterness and an oiliness that cuts through the sugar, and when you toast them first in a dry pan, there’s a smell that fills the kitchen in about ninety seconds, nutty and almost like coffee. Cumin, toasted the same way and ground fresh if you can be bothered, adds a warmth that stops the whole thing tasting like a smoothie. Garlic and a good hit of lemon juice round out the rest. A spoon of tahini gives it the body you want for spreading on a sandwich rather than just dunking.
This is also one of those dips that genuinely improves on day two. The flavours settle, the colour deepens, and it holds its texture well in an insulated lunchbox next to a cold pack, which matters if you’re the one packing it at seven in the morning before anyone’s awake.
What you’ll need
I use whole beetroot I’ve boiled myself most weeks, skins rubbed off under cold running water once they’re cool enough to handle. Vacuum-packed cooked beetroot from the supermarket works fine too and saves you forty minutes, though I find it a touch sweeter and sometimes a bit vinegary depending on the brand, so taste before you add extra lemon.
Ingredients
- 3 medium beetroot (about 500g), boiled or steamed until a knife slides through easily, skins removed
- 80g walnuts, plus extra for scattering on top
- 1 tsp cumin seeds
- 2 tbsp tahini
- 1 small garlic clove, crushed
- Juice of 1 lemon
- 2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil, plus a little more for serving
- Sea salt and black pepper
- A small handful of flat-leaf parsley, roughly chopped, to finish
Method
- Toast the cumin seeds in a dry frying pan over medium heat for about a minute, until they smell fragrant and start to darken slightly. Tip into a mortar and pestle or spice grinder and crush to a rough powder.
- In the same pan, toast the walnuts for 2-3 minutes, shaking the pan often so they don’t catch. They’ll go a shade darker and smell quite nutty. Set a small handful aside for scattering, and let the rest cool.
- Roughly chop the cooked beetroot and put it in a food processor with the cooled walnuts, ground cumin, tahini, garlic, lemon juice and olive oil.
- Blitz until mostly smooth, stopping to scrape down the sides once or twice. If you want it a little looser for spreading on sandwiches, add a tablespoon of water at a time until it’s the consistency you’re after.
- Season with salt and pepper, then taste. It usually needs more lemon than you’d think, beetroot has a way of muting acid.
- Spoon into a bowl or straight into lunchbox containers, scatter with the reserved walnuts and parsley, and finish with a drizzle of olive oil.
Serves 4 as a dip, or makes enough for about 5 lunchbox-sized portions.
Getting it into actual lunchboxes
For kids’ boxes I spread it thin on wraps with grated carrot and a few baby spinach leaves, rolled tight and sliced into rounds so it looks more like sushi than a sandwich, which somehow makes a difference. For my own lunch I pack it as a dip with cucumber batons, snow peas and carrot sticks, plus a small container of crackers kept separate so they stay crisp. It also works spread under a poached egg on toast if you want something more like a proper smashed avo with dukkah and poached egg alternative on a weekend morning.
A variation worth trying, and one I’d skip
Swap the walnuts for toasted pepitas if you’re sending this to a nut-free school, and it still has plenty of texture, though you’ll lose a bit of that bitter edge the walnuts bring. A spoon of pomegranate molasses stirred through at the end is lovely if you have it in the cupboard, adding a sharper sweetness that plays well against the cumin.
What I wouldn’t bother with is roasting the beetroot specifically for this dip if you’re short on time. I’ve done it both ways plenty of times, and the roasted version does taste slightly deeper and more concentrated, but it ties up the oven for close to an hour and the difference in the final dip is honestly marginal once it’s blitzed with everything else. Boiling or steaming gets you there in twenty-five minutes and the result holds up fine against the walnuts and cumin, which are doing most of the flavour work anyway.
Keeping it going through the week
This keeps for about four days in an airtight container in the fridge, and I haven’t had any luck freezing it, the texture turns watery once thawed. If you’re meal-planning around what’s in season and cheap that week, beetroot is reliably one of the better value vegetables through autumn and winter in most Sydney markets, and it’s the kind of thing worth buying in a bunch rather than one at a time. There’s more on that kind of thinking in planning meals around what’s cheap and in season, which is a habit I’m still only half good at myself.
Beetroot also turns up a lot on this site in soup form, and if you like the flavour here but want something warmer for the colder months, the brilliant beetroot soup uses a similar base of beetroot, garlic and lemon, just taken in a different direction.
A note on nutrition, loosely
Beetroot and walnuts together give you a fair bit of fibre, some folate, and the kind of healthy fats that make a dip more satisfying than a sugar-and-fat snack would be, which matters if lunchboxes need to carry kids or adults through to mid-afternoon. The Australian Dietary Guidelines from Eat for Health list legumes, nuts and vegetables like beetroot among the food groups worth building meals around regularly, and walnuts specifically are one of the better plant sources of omega-3 fats according to CSIRO’s published nutrition research. None of that makes this dip a cure for anything, it’s just a reasonably solid thing to be eating most days instead of something from a packet.
If you’re looking to build out a fuller rotation of real-food snacks for the week, I’d put this alongside raw chia energy bars that actually hold together and the dark chocolate and tahini bliss balls, which between them cover most of what gets us through a Sydney working week without reaching for something from the vending machine downstairs.
– Mei Lin, Golden Door Living kitchen
