Beetroot
I think I only discovered the beauty of beetroot in my thirties. If I am not mistaken, when I was a kid, beetroot used to come out of a tin and had the texture of a wet piece of Styrofoam. Now that I have started buying fresh beetroot and have learned to roast or steam it, I have developed a new appreciation for this vegetable. Plus, my kids love it… though that might have more to do with the fact that I told them that their pee would turn pink if they ate loads. (This is very exciting if you happen to be four years old). So here are a couple of things that I have started making with beetroot…
1. I roasted them for an hour in olive oil and a bit of lemon juice and balsamic vinegar in the oven with a garlic clove or two and I then served them as a side dish garnished just with a bit of parsley.
2. I steamed them and then grated them with carrots and made a great salad with a vinagrette sauce. The purple of the beetroot simply looked great mixed in with the orange colour of the carrots.
3. I put a bit of a twist on hummous (I am sure a houmous purist would not be happy) and blended a steamed beetroot with a can of chickpeas, olive oil, a clove of garlic, some lemon juice and a couple of teaspoons of tahini. As you can imagine my pink crazed girls went crazy when they ate pink houmous.
4. I remembered Esther’s red beet salad and made it and it was delicious. I think it is a northern European way of eating beetroot, as I remember it being served in Germany too when I was a kid.
5. With my new-found homemakers enthusiasm I even steamed the beetroot leaves and served them up as a spinach alternative, though I have to say this dish was not the hit of the evening.
Please do let me know if you have any other ideas of how to eat beetroot. I would love to widen my repertoire.
- Emilie
P.S. The photo is of some vegetables we had freshly picked in the country with the beetroot taking centre stage in the middle of the picture.
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Check out our cute onesie with beets on it.
http://www.polarnopyretusa.com/index/page/product/product_id/866/category_id/37/category_chain/3,37/product_name/NEWBORN+WRAP+BODYSUIT
How adorable is that? We wonder if the kids wearing it grow up to love beets.
I love beetroot soup as well, when we lived in Poland I tried it there with yoghurt or a spoon of sour cream and some pepper and salt. It is also quite popular as the first dish of a typical Polish Christmas meal, when they serve it with dumplings…yum….
it’s also really yummy when boiled, colled and chopped, then dressed with mayonnaise, salt, pepper, lots of fresh parsley and chives….. kind of like a potato salad, but with beetroot instead!
Another great beet salad for summer is to toss cooked beets (red or gold) with slices (or cubed) citrus fruit, like oranges or mandarins, some fresh basil, and vinaigrette – also nice with sliced red onion added.
living in Moscow it’s one of the few veg always cheaply available, I have started making soups with it but we love it boiled and sliced with oil, balsamic, fresh basil leaves (purple if you can get it) and goats cheese. Yum yum.
one of our favorites is to roast peeled cubed beets w/olive oil & a dash of salt & pepper. then toss that with some goat cheese and thyme and drizzle with balsamic vinegar (or even better with a balsamic vinegar reduction!)
I wish you wrote this two weeks ago. I got some beetroot in my organic delievery and had no inspiration for what to do with it. the only think I made before was pickled beets with my grandma and that took several weeks and many more beets than I had delievered!