Beets for Vitality

I love everything about beets! Bulbous roots, rich with colors, they have an energetic signature of grounding. in an inspiring and uplifting way. Eating them helps me feel rooted and clear, more open for nourishment from the rest of life.  Rich in natural sugars and high in mineral content when not grown on mineral depleted soils, they can help us balance out cravings for more extreme foods. In the home garden they are easy and beautiful and provide a few snips of leaves to eat while still growing their underground goodness. In our mild Pacific Northwest climate they can be seeded in early spring for summer eating and again in summer for fall into winter.

If you have not enjoyed eating beets, this is a food I would suggest may be because of the previous preparations. Many of us grew up with non-organic beets from cans, boiled or poorly pickled.  This has not given you an experience where the gifts of beet’s flavor and vitality had a way to shine. I suggest you try again with some of the simplest ideas I offer here.

Fall is the perfect time to enjoy beets, and you will want to keep eating them regularly through the winter as well.  At your local farmers market look for beets with their delicious tops attached, bright and unwilted. I like to choose medium sized beets, though I’m really not too picky about size. I almost always roast my beets before using them other ways, unless I’m preparing them raw. For this reason I like to choose roots fairly close in size so they will roast in the same amount of time. Little beets will roast the quickest.  Huge beets could take 2 hours to fully tenderize! I do notice that the fresher they are the quicker they cook, so though they are good keepers, storing them too long will make cooking times longer.

All the varieties of beets delight my palate. Rich purply deep reds are my all time favorites and yet some times golden beets with their more subtle flavor are just the right choice. Chioggas, with their concentric rings of  deep pink and white have a delicacy that is unexpected with their form.  When you get them home from the market cut the stems off the roots, leaving maybe an inch of stem attached to the root and store the greens in a bag in the crisper drawer and use them very soon. The roots are much less perishable.

Beet Greens

The greens can be used in any recipe which calls for their close relative chard or even most recipes which call for cooking spinach (another close but more delicate relative.) Beet greens are delicious for a quick saute with garlic for a side dish with a pinch of salt and a splash of your favorite vinegar. Please don’t throw out the stems! Chop them and add to the pan with the garlic two minutes ahead of the chopped greens. A  few quick stirs of the greens and watch for their color to brighten. As soon as they are bright green and wilted, remove them from the hot pan and add the splash of vinegar. Cooking greens just long enough and removing from the heat is the key to best flavor. Cooked too long and they quickly lose appeal and nutrients a well. Organic coconut oil is great choice for this saute but lately I’ve been loving to use butter. Cooking your greens in a little bit of fat makes their nutrients more accessible. For years I used extra virgin olive oil but I’m less and less wanting to heat this delicate oil, using it instead as a raw addition at the end. Alternately ou can easily water sauté these greens and add your olive oil as a dressing with the splash of vinegar after cooking. Skip the pinch of salt and choose umeboshi vinegar for serious yum factor.

Raw Beets

Raw beets are fantastic to add to juice. Alone as a juice it is too strong and can detoxify your body at a rate to stress your liver but mixed with carrot and ginger, perhaps apple, celery and parsley,  it's deliciously yummy and a great health blood and liver cleanser. Raw shreds are great additions to most any green salad. Keep in mind the staining quality of the red flesh though and don't wear your favorite white shirt when you grate or juice beets! In another post I will include a recipe for Passion Slaw, my beet and red cabbage based slaw with an Asian inspired dressing. This season though, I want the soothing nourishment of roasted beets.

Roasting beets 

Scrub the roots well but do not peel. Trim the stalks away from the root with one chop, without discarding much of the actual root. The long root can be trimmed but it is not necessary to remove it altogether.
A lot of folks recommend wrapping the beets in Aluminum foil for roasting. Though I’m sure this works, I prefer not to cook in aluminum or to support the very toxic process of aluminum mining so aluminum foil is not something I keep in my kitchen. I prefer reuseable options.
I love to roast beets in my dutch oven. It’s an old heavy cast iron with a heavy lid. I’ve also used other roasting/baking dishes of pyrex or corning ware but always with a close fitting lid. 400 degree oven is my preference, but if you have something else in the oven at a lower temp and you want ot roast beets too then just be prepared to roast them longer. 
Roast your medium sized beets for about 45 minutes to an hour. I hesitate to say specific time because it is so variable with size and age of the roots. The simplest way to figure it is that they are done when a fork goes in without resistance. The longer they roast the sweeter they will be, as the sugar carmelizes. Sometimes I speed the process up by putting some water in the dutch oven to steam/roast them. Sometimes I roast them and only add a little water when they close to done. Water is not necessary.
A fun variation I occasionally do is to peel a whole yellow onion and score it in a grid pattern cutting 80% through the bulb and place it in the middle of the whole beets in the roasting pot. It will turn pink and carmelize into an amazing pink onion chrysanthemum in the roasting pot. Finish it with balsamic or fig vinegar and there’s a little taste of heaven for you!
The clean up from this roasting is much easier if you remove the beets when they are done and add water to soften the baked on sugars in your cooking vessel before they cool and harden! If you don't do this you will have some serious scrubbing to do.

 The skins of the roasted beets slip off easily. I like to roast more than I can eat in a meal and keep them whole in a container in the fridge to add to various dishes or on the side for days to come.  Simple slice these beauties hot or cold and dress with a splash of Balsamic vinegar and enjoy.
A bed of raw greens especially arugula, topped with sliced or cubed roasted beets, a crumble of feta  or sliced hard boiled egg and a few toasted nuts is an awesome fall/winter lunch salad.
I enjoy a slab of roasted beet on a yolky fried egg, or even in quesadillas.

Roasted beets become ingredients in some other more complex dishes, both sweet and savory. I'll include two here. This Ricotta Beet pie is amazingly pink and super delicious. The Chocolate Beet Cake is my favorite dark moist chocolate cake ever. Beets were the original color in Red Velvet cake, though this recipe is much darker than that!

Savory Ricotta Beet Pie

Nut crust :
2 cups hazelnuts blended to a meal
¼ cup brown rice flour
½ cup water
½ tsp salt

Filling:
½ pound whole milk ricotta
½ cup yogurt or whipping cream
2 medium roasted beets

1 large leek cleaned sliced thin
1 small head of radicchio, sliced thin
2T olive oil
1 T balsamic vinegar
1 handful of  dry dulse, shredded with scissors
2 eggs
 ½ tsp salt (if you can find smoked salt use this, it’s amazing)
black pepper to taste

Mix crust ingredients and pat into a buttered glass 9"pie plate. Set aside.

Saute thinly sliced leeks in olive oil and remove half from pan., setting aside. Add thinly sliced radicchio and sauté until wilted. Add 1T balsamic vinegar and remove from heat and add  chopped dulse.  Set aside.

In a food processor blend roasted beets and set aside plain cooked leeks with the ricotta. Remove from processor and mix in heavy cream and 2 beaten eggs. Add salt and pepper.

Put ¾ the veggie mix into the pie crust. Pour on the filling. Top with the remaining veggie shreds. Bake in a preheated 375 degree oven for 60 minutes. The top will begin to crack and the center gets firm.

Let this cool a bit to set before cutting.  It is also delicious cold.

Chocolate Beet Cake

1  13 oz. can  full fat coconut milk
4  small or 3 medium roasted beets, skins removed after roasting
1 ½ cup sugar
1T vanilla
¾ cup baking cocoa
3  well beaten eggs
1 cup brown rice flour
1 cup almond meal
1 cup oat flour
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
¼ tsp sea salt

Butter and flour a 9” x 13” baking pan or 2-9” round pans.  You can use circles of parchment in cut to fit the bottom of the round pans for easy removal. Preheat the oven to 375° 

Mix the  all the dry indredients and set aside.
Blend the coconut milk, beets and sugar in the food processor until smooth.
Remove from the food processor and add the vanilla and beaten eggs. (Resist the temptation to add the eggs into the food processor with the metal cutting blade!) mix well.
Add the dry ingredients to the wet and stir only enough to moisten all the flours.
Pour into pans and bake 25-35 minutes or until a skewer comes clean. Cool thoroughly before removing from pans.

 When cool dust with powdered sugar, or frost with this or another chocolate frosting. Chocolate rose glaze is amazing on this also. If you have made round cakes a middle layer of a berry jam is a special treat.

Chocolate frosting

¾ cup butter, softened
1 ¼ cup powdered sugar

Cream these, set aside.
 
1 cup milk, or cream
¼ cup brown rice flour
½ cup cocoa powder

Combine these in a heavy bottom sauce pan and stir constantly with a whisk to over medium heat to thicken until it almost comes to a boil.  Remove from heat and place in a bowl set in a bowl of ice cubes to cool it, yet continue to stir constantly. When cool stir in the butter sugar mixture to the chocolate and milk mixture.