Farro Salad with Roasted Beets, Watercress, and Poppy Seed Dressing

Once again CL comes through with an alternative to the mid-week humdrum. The dressing alone garners five stars, and the combination of other flavors with the farro is tasty and surprisingly filling. Both home-roasted beets (so easy) and watercress were strangers to my table but are now on the list of possibilities in meal-planning. My only alterations were to use Greek yogurt instead of sour cream in the dressing, with some powdered lecithin to emulsify the oil. I would certainly serve this to company or make this again for just the two of us.

Good poppy seed dressing. I substituted plain yogurt for the sour cream since I didn't have any.

Hearty & tasty. I used wheat berries (they take ~2 hrs. on the stove but only 45 in the pressure cooker: 1c berries + 3 C chicken broth). Yum, chewy and healthy! Roasted the beets 1 wk. in advance to make prep. a snap. Also, I combined spinach with the watercress to cut down on the peppery taste (kids liked it better) and I doubled the dressing (glad I did). I would make this again for sure!!

this was awesome! more like 3 main dish servings, but because of the farro - filling and satisfying. as I prepared the dressing I tweaked it a bit to taste, ended up with closer to 3 tsp honey, and I didn't have walnut oil, only almond oil. it was beautiful, tasty, healthy and absolutely delicious!

If you can't find or don't want to use farro, I think any bean, lentil or wheat berry would substitute just fine. It is also a great salad without the farro. I used microgreens with watercress and highly recommend this mixture. Also, to speed things up (and lower cost), you can use the freshly packed cooked beets in the produce dept. - I prepared salad twice -- Roasted beets vs cooked beets -- both ways are great.

This was delicious. I made two substitutions since I didn't have the ingredients called for: I used spelt instead of farro (cooking time for spelt is closer to an hour) and I used olive oil instead of walnut oil.

This was a really wonderful salad and the dressing is fabulous. I used barley instead of farro since that's what I had. The barley was a nice chewy texture in contrast with the goat cheese and the beets. I will definitely make this again.

Awesome. The bite of the watercress paired perfectly with the sweet beats, chewy grains and goat cheese. I substituted spelt for the farro and reduced the oil in the dressing.

Delicious, filling, and healthy. I found farro at Whole Foods and it had a great chewy texture, similar to wheat berries or barley. The combination of beets, goat cheese, farro, greens, and the dressing were great. Loved it!

Delicious salad! As others have mentioned, the dressing was fantastic. I used feta rather than goat cheese and olive oil for the walnut oil. I will definitely make this again.

Great recipe and only stumbled upon it in the April 2013 issue. Glad I looked it up on the web!! I have never worked with farro before and certainly never made poppy-anything before. The dressing is awesome...the salad a hit. Served it with Grilled Salmon but the salad itself is a meal -- if there are veggie-only people out there - this would be a great meal on its own!!