Sunday, July 12, 2009
Beets me!
When I was a kid, I doubt you could have paid me to eat a beet. A funny sounding word, beet, I just wasn't hip to trying them. I did eat plenty of veggies as a kid, so it's not like I ended up malnourished. I discovered beets last year on a trip to NYC with some friends and got interested in cooking my own through seeing them in our Locally Grown market. Roasted beets sounded like the easiest way to go and it would allow me to add only what I wanted to as the recipe went on. Because beets are sweet, many recipes try to add even more sugar. I'm all about dessert, but veggies should be veggies and dessert should be dessert
I've often thought that I should blog about my beet-ing, but I've been a bit tardy about getting out the camera. Although the pesto post was deliciously beautiful, this one may top it. Lots more shiny things.
So to roast beets, you need a few things.
Beets? Check.
Sheets of aluminum foil? Check. (Yes, I needed to wash dishes. Those glasses are my new Riedel Cabernet glasses. AB.SO.LU.TE.LY NOT dishwasher safe. Beautiful, though. You'll be relieved to know that they are washed and safely in the cabinet.)
Oven? Check. I know an oven isn't usually listed as an ingredient, but my point here is that we're not using a pan for sauteeing, we're not boiling, we're not microwaving. We're roasting, which makes an oven important.
Grab a beet, put it in foil. This is a lovely yellow beet.
This is a lovely red beet all nestled in foil, ready to look like....
THIS!
Just crumple up the foil and put your lovely on a sheet pan (technically, this is a half sheet pan). Yes there are a lot of them. Beet roasting means the oven is on and beets are ready in late spring, when I'd rather not heat up the house for no good reason. Beets ARE a good reason, but since it's just as easy to roast many as it is to roast one, use your energy wisely....and roast plenty of beets.
Then put your lovelies in a very hot oven, say 425 degrees. No matter how large or small your beets are, these are going to take at least 40 minutes. You'd be safe if you planned on an hour. Tiny beets, round beets, oblong beets, doesn't matter. It's a mystery of thermodynamic mass that someone smarter than I will have to figure out. I just plan to spend a little reading time while the beets roast. OK, I don't always read; I watch TV. Bravo or Law and Order, usually.
When they're ready, open up the foil wads and let them cool. Doesn't the beet juice on the foil look pretty? Pink, yellow and shiny.
This one has all 3 in one package. Isn't that gorgeous?
Once they're cooled, you can just slip the skins right off. Yes, you'll get beet juice on your hands. It comes off. You can always wash your hands with salt to get anything that soap and water miss. As a bonus, it will leave your hands nice and soft.
Look at the leftover foil. I love that.
After your effort, you have beets to do almost anything with. Put them on a salad with goat cheese; put salt, pepper and olive oil on them; sautee the beet greens, make a vinagrette, toss some cannellini beans in, toss in the beets and you have a nice vegan dinner.
You'll note that the beets are segregated. I'm not some kind of color hater, but once beets are cut or cooked, their juice becomes an effective dye. Really. People have used beets to dye all kinds of things for centuries. Look on the side of a strawberry Yoplait container. There's beet juice in it to make it nice and pink. But I digress. I'd like the yellow beets to stay yellow. I'd like the pinkish ones to stay pink. Put them in with one of those dark red ones and all lighter color is lost. As cute as the tiny ones are, they took just as long to cook as the ones to their left and were a complete pain to peel.
So that's beets in just a few steps. Try them....I DARE you!
I've often thought that I should blog about my beet-ing, but I've been a bit tardy about getting out the camera. Although the pesto post was deliciously beautiful, this one may top it. Lots more shiny things.
So to roast beets, you need a few things.
Beets? Check.
Sheets of aluminum foil? Check. (Yes, I needed to wash dishes. Those glasses are my new Riedel Cabernet glasses. AB.SO.LU.TE.LY NOT dishwasher safe. Beautiful, though. You'll be relieved to know that they are washed and safely in the cabinet.)
Oven? Check. I know an oven isn't usually listed as an ingredient, but my point here is that we're not using a pan for sauteeing, we're not boiling, we're not microwaving. We're roasting, which makes an oven important.
Grab a beet, put it in foil. This is a lovely yellow beet.
This is a lovely red beet all nestled in foil, ready to look like....
THIS!
Just crumple up the foil and put your lovely on a sheet pan (technically, this is a half sheet pan). Yes there are a lot of them. Beet roasting means the oven is on and beets are ready in late spring, when I'd rather not heat up the house for no good reason. Beets ARE a good reason, but since it's just as easy to roast many as it is to roast one, use your energy wisely....and roast plenty of beets.
Then put your lovelies in a very hot oven, say 425 degrees. No matter how large or small your beets are, these are going to take at least 40 minutes. You'd be safe if you planned on an hour. Tiny beets, round beets, oblong beets, doesn't matter. It's a mystery of thermodynamic mass that someone smarter than I will have to figure out. I just plan to spend a little reading time while the beets roast. OK, I don't always read; I watch TV. Bravo or Law and Order, usually.
When they're ready, open up the foil wads and let them cool. Doesn't the beet juice on the foil look pretty? Pink, yellow and shiny.
This one has all 3 in one package. Isn't that gorgeous?
Once they're cooled, you can just slip the skins right off. Yes, you'll get beet juice on your hands. It comes off. You can always wash your hands with salt to get anything that soap and water miss. As a bonus, it will leave your hands nice and soft.
Look at the leftover foil. I love that.
After your effort, you have beets to do almost anything with. Put them on a salad with goat cheese; put salt, pepper and olive oil on them; sautee the beet greens, make a vinagrette, toss some cannellini beans in, toss in the beets and you have a nice vegan dinner.
You'll note that the beets are segregated. I'm not some kind of color hater, but once beets are cut or cooked, their juice becomes an effective dye. Really. People have used beets to dye all kinds of things for centuries. Look on the side of a strawberry Yoplait container. There's beet juice in it to make it nice and pink. But I digress. I'd like the yellow beets to stay yellow. I'd like the pinkish ones to stay pink. Put them in with one of those dark red ones and all lighter color is lost. As cute as the tiny ones are, they took just as long to cook as the ones to their left and were a complete pain to peel.
So that's beets in just a few steps. Try them....I DARE you!
Labels: food porn, foodie stuff
