Anyone can cobble a collection of recipes into a decent meal; great home cooks know that the best meals are balanced. What is a prime rib dinner without a ramekin of horseradish? Tacos al Pastor without the pineapple? Or a cheesy, bacon-laden egg sandwich without a few dashes of hot sauce? (They’re good, but not as good as they could be.)

If you’re serving a centerpiece-sized portion of roasted meat over the spring holidays, consider this Beet and Carrot Salad with Horseradish and Dill from our cookbook, “Cookish,” the cheat code to creating balance. Whether it’s served with lamb, prime rib or a simple chuck roast, this pile of shredded vegetables punches through meaty richness while delivering a heap of garden-sweet freshness. Your palate is never saturated with one flavor, letting you enjoy your meal a little longer (and get a little fuller).

Unlock sweetness with the science of shredding

The foundation of this lettuce-free salad is shredded carrots and beets. Both deliver earthy sweetness, though it’s hard to beat beets in the earthiness department. To ensure both taste as sweet as possible, we turn to the humble box grater—we like this one from Cuisipro.

While julienning everything into neat little matchsticks might seem like the more refined approach, shredding is faster and—more importantly—it produces a better tasting salad. Cutting root vegetables ruptures cells, releasing sugars and volatile hydrocarbons, the source of their sweetness and aroma. The more rupturing, the more releasing—and few things rupture cells like grating. The technique also creates a more porous surface and exposes more of that surface, boosting the dressing's ability to adhere to the vegetables.

Horseradish brings pleasure with pain

No one ever orders a “painful salad,” but whisking horseradish into a vinaigrette is a bit masochistic. According to Dr. Arielle Johnson’s “Flavorama,” spicy isn’t a taste at all, but a touch. The sharp, sulfurous molecules released by horseradish are irritants that can sting your eyes, sinuses and mouth.

And we love it. We can’t get enough.

The small amount of controlled pain is exhilarating, but the heat clears the palate along with your sinuses, resetting it between bites of well-marbled meat.

Couple it with a tangy lemon vinaigrette and a small handful of fresh dill, and you have a jewel-toned bowl of fresh, vibrant vegetables, punctuated with earthy pops of caraway seeds and verdant notes from the herb. Serve with a dollop of sour cream for a note of creamy acidity.

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Claire Lower

Claire Lower is the Digital Editor for Christopher Kimball’s Milk Street, with over a decade of experience as a food writer and recipe developer. Claire began writing about food (and drinks) during the blogging boom in the late 2000s, eventually leaving her job as a lab technician to pursue writing full-time. After freelancing for publications such as Serious Eats, Yahoo Food, xoJane and Cherry Bombe Magazine, she eventually landed at Lifehacker, where she served as the Senior Food Editor for nearly eight years. Claire lives in Portland, Oregon with a very friendly dog and very mean cat. When not in the kitchen (or at her laptop), you can find her deadlifting at the gym, fly fishing or trying to master figure drawing at her local art studio.