A few summers ago, I stood face to face with a few vegetables that scared me. I love to eat almost all veggies, but I have met a few I didn’t know how to prepare. As I looked at the vegetables on my counter, one scared me because it looked like it would stand up and walk away on one of its many skinny little arms, the other because I had never cooked with it before. The first was kohlrabi, the other was a bunch of beets.
The kohlrabi made a stunning slaw once it was shredded and mixed with some apples, and I was thrilled to learn to savor the taste of a new veggie.I knew I would love the beets, too, if I could only figure out how to cook them. I had never stood looking over beets as they sat there, stems and all, flesh as tough as raw potatoes, on my kitchen counter. This called for consulting the Joy of Cooking, my go-to guide in all things culinary.
It turns out beets are easy to cook, and, fresh from the farm market, they’re tender and tasty. Here’s a simple way:
Roasted Beets
- Category: Salad
Ingredients
- Beets
Instructions
- Scrub the beets gently.
- Cut all but 2 inches of the stems off (even the stems are edible! One blogger recommends adding them to pasta or stew or pickling them!)
- Boil the beets until a fork can slip into them easily (Joy of Cooking says 30-40 minutes for young beets and an hour or so for older ones).
- On a plate slip the skin off and cut the beet however you like it. It will turn the water and anything it touches in your kitchen reddish purple, so cut the beets on a glass plate.
My next step was to add the beets to a salad. This recipe, which called for the perfect balance of sweet candied walnuts, savory goat cheese, and sweet and earthy beets and baby greens, made a delicious salad and has been one I’ve served to guests and brought to friends houses numerous times. And have beets to thank for teaching me how a new vegetable can add new recipes and procedures to my repertoire.
Liked that recipe? Try another! Garden Harvest Slaw Wrap from Weaver’s Orchard, one of our vendors!