Beets have always been one of my favourite vegetables. You can eat them fresh in salads, cooked as a side dish or pickled and they always taste great! Every weekend I drink freshly squeezed beet and carrot juice and it’s very delicious.
Available for most of the year, beets make a great addition to most meals. Oven roasting the beets ensures you have an easy way to cook the beets for the many dishes you want to include them in. You can roast the beets and place them in a container in the fridge, and when you are ready to eat them you can heat them up in the microwave. You can serve them as the main or side dish.
Roasted Beets
4 portions, takes 2 hours
8 Beets
2 tablespoon olive oil
1 tablespoon vinegar
2 teaspoon caraway
Turn the oven on the 375c. While the oven is warming up, wash the beets. Place the beets in an oven safe dish and cover the beets with water, until the water reaches half way to the beets.
Place the beets in the oven when the oven has warmed up. The beets will take about 1 hour and 30 minutes to roast; they should be turned every 15 minutes. Depending on the size of the beet they will take a different amount of time to roast. Every 15 minutes when the beets are turned you can check whether they are roasted. The best way to check is by squeezing the beets; they should be squishy, similarly to how whole roasted potatoes are. Depending on the size, I remove the smaller beets at the 45 minute mark. When the beets begin to roast, you will notice a sweet smell when you open the oven door.
Once the beets are roasted, remove from oven and let them cool down. Remove the beet skin by peeling away the outer layers, you should be able to remove the beet skin similarly to cooked potatoes - but sometimes you have to use a knife to finish the job. Dice the beets, add the oil, vinegar, and caraway and stir.
The beets make a great side dish, but they can also be added to a 500 ml jar with rice and roasted radicchio. I make about 5 jars of these on the weekend and I eat them during lunch time. The sealed jars are a convenient way to store my lunches and bring them to work.
Find the closest farm that sells beets to you.
– Andreea Nicoara
