The Whole Beet

 

What a coincidence - right after reading Julia Moskin's article about using the whole plant while cooking, and Tom Laskawy's article on stem-to-root cooking, our garden beets were ready to harvest.  I've cooked beets before, but usually I buy them loose, with their leaves and stems already trimmed.  This is the first year that the beet plants in our garden actually grew, and I was taken by the gorgeous green and purple leaves.

 I looked for a recipe that would use both the beets and the beet leaves, and found one from allrecipes.com, for Roasted Beets and Sauteed Beet Greens. 

1 bunch beets with greens

1/4 cup olive oil, divided

2 cloves garlic, minced

2 tablespoons chopped onion

1) First, I washed the beets. This is probably the most time consuming part, and why it's tempting to just buy loose beets, or even easier, buy the ones that come already cooked and peeled in the package.  But, the point here was to use the entire, natural plant, so I soaked the whole plant (beets & leaves) in a tub of water, changing the water several times, until all the dirt was off.

2) I cut off the greens, and placed just the beets in a baking dish. I used both golden and red beets. If you use two colors, separate them into two dishes, or with a piece of foil so the red ones don't bleed on the golden ones. Brush them with 2 tablespoons olive oil, cover and bake at 350 degrees for 45 minutes. They're done when you can pierce them easily (like testing a baked potato).

3. When they're done, let them cool until you can handle them. Now's the fun part - peeling them. The skins come off easily with a peeler or paring knife. Your fingers will turn purple but it'll wash off.

4. Now for the greens.  The entire green part is edible, but the ribs and stems are tougher and take longer to cook, so I ripped the leaves off the stems, and saved the stems for another recipe. That left me with a nice pile of pretty leaves, ripped into small pieces.

5. To cook the greens, heat 2 tablespoons oil in a skillet, and sautee the chopped garlic and onion. I used onion from my garden, so I saved the green stems to cook with the beet leaves (use the whole plant!).  Add the greens and cook while stirring, until the greens are wilted. 

The original recipe called for salt and pepper, and red wine vinegar, but I didn't add these - the beets and leaves were flavorful enough.  I served the roasted beets on a bed of the greens, along with a carribean black bean dish and quinoa. The beet leaves weren't as sweet as spinach, but not as bitter as collards.  

The most amazing part of this was realizing that this dish cost almost nothing to make - basically just the cost of the seed packet.  If I had gone out to buy the ingredients, I could have easily spent $3 on a pack of cooked peeled beets, and another $3 on a bag of salad greens.  Pretty cool that this substantial side dish came from just a handful of cheap seeds.