Dumb question to the cooks: Beets!

Cafe Society
1

I don’t like beets. Never have. To me, they taste like dirt.

As mentioned in previous threads, Mr VOW is recuperating from a heart attack. He’s doing well. Part of the reason for that, he’s eating healthy stuff. A lot of fresh fruits and veggies, and everything is with NO SALT.

I’m a halfway decent cook, and fortunately I have the time to dedicate to preparing lots of fresh stuff. Because, let’s face it! Fresh stuff is WORK!

Today he requested beets.

Again, I don’t like them, so it’s not something I have prepared very often over the years (and years). Mostly, I have opened a can and heated them up, and handed them to him.

Canned stuff has salt…

The Daughter will buy beets on her next grocery excursion.

Years ago, I got scolded soundly from my mother for twisting off the top of a bunch of beets too closely to the root. To hear her complain, you’d think the beets bled out completely in the cooking water and she had white golf balls left to eat. In the horror of serving golf balls to Mr VOW instead of his requested beets, I did a little research online.

Horrors! Almost all directions for cooking beets begin, “Cut off tops and root bottoms next to the beet.” Some directions say to cut the beet into dices or wedges before cooking! My mother is screaming from the Hereafter!

One set of directions say to leave on one inch of tops to prevent bleeding. Momma wanted almost the whole damned top left on!

Are people really eating white beets?

Do deep red cooked beets taste better than one that have bled out all their “beetiness” in the cooking water?

Or are beets going to bleed into cooking water no matter what you do?

Seriously, I’ll probably end up roasting the damned things.

Advice, suggestions, derogatory remarks?
~VOW

2

Beets me!

3

Try to get some of the marbled ones. Ummm, can’t remember the name…Googles…Chioggia. They’re less “beet-y” and kind of sweet. I like to grill them, but roasting with some olive oil, salt&pepper would probably be good.

I’ve never heard of red beets getting anywhere close to white while boiling.

4

If the red bleed is an issue, there are now golden beets, which are delicious and don’t make a red mess.

And yes, roasting them, whether they are red or golden, is the best way of cooking them, IMO. They develop a nice deep roasty flavor. Then you can peel and slice them and drizzle olive oil (the heart patient’s best friend) all over them, along with a little lemon juice or vinegar and some chopped basil.

Yum, roasted beets.

5

Mr VOW is a “purist.” A better word would be “hardhead.” He doesn’t want anything on his veggies but butter. LOTS of butter. Of course, that ain’t happening these days.

If I tried to serve him golden beets or candy cane beets, he’d get a look on his face like he had something nasty-tasting in his mouth, and he’d say, “Why do you want to mess with them?”

I, personally, would like to try golden beets or candy cane beets, to see if maybe they DON’T taste like dirt!

I’ll probably roast them.
~VOW

6

You mean they’re edible? I can’t even stand the smell of them cooking.

7

You’re doing nothing wrong. They don’t “bleed out”. Roast the damn things whole in the skins, or cut up with other root vegetables like carrots and parsnips, etc. I like them with a dollop of sour cream or thick yogurt, and generous sprinkle of coarse salt and olive oil as a side. In arugula salads with gorgonzola and good aged balsamic vinegar.

But yeah, if you find they taste like dirt, you’ll just have to get over it and adapt or stop eating them.

8

Are you telling me that you threw away the beet tops? They’re excellent as cooked greens, or in salads, and they don’t turn your poop red the way beetroots do.

How about pickled beets?

9

Can Mr. VOW have a little sugar? I assume he can, or he couldn’t have beets. Pickle them. You can do it with vinegar, dill or mustard seed, pepper if you want, and sugar (or use a sweet vinegar, like cider or rice).

Make slaw with carrots, onions and broccoli stems.

If you have them, use a composite cutting board and a stainless steel knife - much easier to clean than wood, bamboo, carbon steel or ceramic. Also, if you cook them before you clean or cut them, cooked beet juice is easier to deal with than the raw stuff, but there’s more of it.

Beets can be used almost anywhere you would put a turnip or rutabaga or any other root vegetable. I’ve put them in samosas, Cornish pasties (come to think of it, those are pretty much the same thing), made chips, and so on. Just remember beets add a little extra sugar and adjust seasonings accordingly.

And you can use beets instead of artificial food coloring to make Red Velvet Cake, but I suppose that’s off the menu anyway.

10

No, because they would be high in salt.

I cover beets with foil and roast them. I can then slip the skin off easily, slice and prepare them how I wish (usually with a bit of basalmic vinegar and honey). But yes, the smell of them roasting with the skin on is very dirt-y. Far more so than other root veggies. Therefore, I usually roast enough for three meals, remove the skins and then store the excess roasted beets for a couple of days.

11

Nope, pickled beets are usually done with cider vinegar, sugar, and cinnamon or similar spices. No salt needed. I make them all the time. They’re fabulous on sandwiches.

12

Pickled, with or without salt will NOT work. The “purist,” remember?

On the other hand, I would probably love them pickled!
~VOW

13

Why would pickled beets be necessarily high in salt? Regular pickles, yeah, those are high in salt, but beets tend to be presented on the sweet side of the flavor spectrum.

Looking at the commercially made pickled beets, they range from 2% to 10% of sodium dv, whereas it looks like dill pickles can go up to 50% of the sodium dv

14

Ah - pickled not acceptable anyway!

15

:eek:

Gah! You dredged up an ancient memory! When I was a kid, we spent the summer in Missouri with my mother’s folks. My grandfather had an ENORMOUS garden and grew everything. When the beets were ripe, he hauled in armloads. I didn’t pay any attention to what my mother and grandmother did for prep work, but that night, I tried to sleep in the miserable, humid Missouri heat (that was before air conditioning was invented) while huge vats of beets boiled on the stove, seemingly overnight.

retch
~VOW

16

I can’t speak to roasted beets because I’ve never made them. (I have eaten them, though. Yum.) When I was married, we had a huge garden, and I had to put up loads of beets. (Yes, they keep, but not long enough to get to the next harvest.) And when they were fresh, it was too hot out to have the oven on. SO

You won’t lose any color by cutting close to the beet at either end. They’re basically cooking in color. Beets were a deep, rich red regardless of which way I cut them. Sorry, but your mama was mistaken on this one.

Also, have you tried Morton’s Salt Substitute? My sister is on a very low-sodium diet and told me about it. To my surprise, it really does taste just like salt! I think you can pickle beets with it, but I’m not sure. I know you can’t use it in fermented pickle recipes.

17

Ignorance fought, thank you dwyr. My grandmother pickled them the same way she pickled cukes. It might be why I’ve never liked them…

18

Would he like borscht? With that, the beets bleeding into the cooking liquid is a feature, not a bug. I made some with pink beets once, which lead to a rather shocking fluorescent soup!

Also, if you have a Trader Joe’s within a decent distance they have some good no-salt seasoning mixes.

19

Moderator Action

Moving thread from MPSIMS to the beety Cafe Society.

20

If he’s that much a purist, I would say this is the correct thing to do. See QuickSilver’s post.

I love beets in all their various forms. One of my favorite preparations shredded, seasoned with rosemary, and fried with butter as a rösti (kind of a Scandinavian hashbrown.) But that wouldn’t be “purist.”