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One thing I've been eating a lot of this year is beets. I was buying beets in the supermarket today, and the woman behind me in the queue noticed and said "I've been addicted to beets all winter!" I said I felt the same way. They're cheap (about fifty-nine cents per pound, or in the same neighborhood as yellow cooking onions) and don't have to travel very far because they can actually be grown in Canada at the colder end of the year.
These were fresh beets, of course. A lot of people don't like beets, and it's probably because most people are used to eating them out of cans. Canned beets have lost their crunch to overcooking and their flavour to over-salting. Cooked at home from fresh, they're sweet and crisp and earthy-tasting. I have a soft spot for the canned ones anyways -- they were one of the first solid foods I can remember eating -- but fresh ones are like a higher plane of beet existence. (A word of warning, and possibly Too Much Information: do not be alarmed if you see anything purple in the toilet after you've been eating beets. It is normal for both #1 and #2 to take on a rather technicolour quality.)
So, if you're interested in a vegetable that is cheap and sweet and can be stored for a long time (and that turn everything they touch to purple), here are some easy ways to try them.
The Basics: Beets can be cooked any way that carrots can be cooked. They just need more time, and can't easily be eaten raw (unless they're grated finely), because they're a lot tougher than carrots in their natural state. If you like cooked carrots, you will probably like beets cooked properly.
The simplest thing is to boil them. Scrub off any major amounts of dirt, cut off the scraggly root end and stem end, and cut the beets into pieces about the size of golf balls. With bigger beets this might mean cutting them in quarters or even sixths; baby beets are already the size of golf balls and won't have to be cut.
Cover the pieces with water in a pot, and bring it all to a boil with a lid on. (If there's no lid, not only will it take longer to boil, but you'll have purple juice splattered all over your stovetop.) After about ten minutes of boiling, stick them with a fork. If the fork goes in easily, they're ready. If not, put the lid back on and check them every five minutes or so. Fish them out of the water, which will be extremely dark and purple and could probably be used to dye cloth or Easter eggs. Eat them as they are, or with a bit of butter or oil and salt and pepper. They're very flavourful and tend not to need a lot of enhancement.
If you want to take it a step further, you can roast them. Boil the cut pieces for about five minutes to soften them up a bit (this is called parboiling in cookbook-ese), which will also get the remaining dirt off them. (The instinct is to peel them, but if you're going to boil them they don't need peeling at all.) Coat the pieces lightly with oil or butter or margarine and put them in an oven-safe dish. Turn the oven on to 350 F and roast them for about half an hour.
Recipes: I'll post a more complicated beet recipe later, if I can find one. Honestly, they taste so good on their own that they don't need to be hidden in anything -- and anyways, if you try to mix them into something you'll just end up with a purple casserole.
One thing I've been eating a lot of this year is beets. I was buying beets in the supermarket today, and the woman behind me in the queue noticed and said "I've been addicted to beets all winter!" I said I felt the same way. They're cheap (about fifty-nine cents per pound, or in the same neighborhood as yellow cooking onions) and don't have to travel very far because they can actually be grown in Canada at the colder end of the year.
These were fresh beets, of course. A lot of people don't like beets, and it's probably because most people are used to eating them out of cans. Canned beets have lost their crunch to overcooking and their flavour to over-salting. Cooked at home from fresh, they're sweet and crisp and earthy-tasting. I have a soft spot for the canned ones anyways -- they were one of the first solid foods I can remember eating -- but fresh ones are like a higher plane of beet existence. (A word of warning, and possibly Too Much Information: do not be alarmed if you see anything purple in the toilet after you've been eating beets. It is normal for both #1 and #2 to take on a rather technicolour quality.)
So, if you're interested in a vegetable that is cheap and sweet and can be stored for a long time (and that turn everything they touch to purple), here are some easy ways to try them.
The Basics: Beets can be cooked any way that carrots can be cooked. They just need more time, and can't easily be eaten raw (unless they're grated finely), because they're a lot tougher than carrots in their natural state. If you like cooked carrots, you will probably like beets cooked properly.
The simplest thing is to boil them. Scrub off any major amounts of dirt, cut off the scraggly root end and stem end, and cut the beets into pieces about the size of golf balls. With bigger beets this might mean cutting them in quarters or even sixths; baby beets are already the size of golf balls and won't have to be cut.
Cover the pieces with water in a pot, and bring it all to a boil with a lid on. (If there's no lid, not only will it take longer to boil, but you'll have purple juice splattered all over your stovetop.) After about ten minutes of boiling, stick them with a fork. If the fork goes in easily, they're ready. If not, put the lid back on and check them every five minutes or so. Fish them out of the water, which will be extremely dark and purple and could probably be used to dye cloth or Easter eggs. Eat them as they are, or with a bit of butter or oil and salt and pepper. They're very flavourful and tend not to need a lot of enhancement.
If you want to take it a step further, you can roast them. Boil the cut pieces for about five minutes to soften them up a bit (this is called parboiling in cookbook-ese), which will also get the remaining dirt off them. (The instinct is to peel them, but if you're going to boil them they don't need peeling at all.) Coat the pieces lightly with oil or butter or margarine and put them in an oven-safe dish. Turn the oven on to 350 F and roast them for about half an hour.
Recipes: I'll post a more complicated beet recipe later, if I can find one. Honestly, they taste so good on their own that they don't need to be hidden in anything -- and anyways, if you try to mix them into something you'll just end up with a purple casserole.
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