Bake Your Beets

Beets are a great vegetable to grow at home. In addition to the color they add to your garden, beets are packed with potassium, antioxidants, and sweet, sweet flavor. Recently I wrote about using beet greens as a nutritious and colorful salad or soup supplement. Today I'll be writing about another recent discovery of mine - baked beets.

Until last year, I always boiled my beets, and I was left with a feeling that a lot of the nutrients must have been lost in the water because that's where a lot of the color went. To remedy that, I drank the water just in case my hypothesis was right. Also, my beets lost the deep purple color that I love, and turned a little whitish.

The solution? Bake the beets.

Baking your beets takes longer (about 45-60 minutes for two or three big beets), but you retain flavor, nutrients, and color, and you don't have to peel the beets beforehand. Those are all worth the extra time to me.

I've created an illustrated cooking guide for the visual learners out there, and for the linguistic learners, I'll also list the few easy steps for baking your beets.

1. Harvest your beets (or let your kids do it - it's loads of fun for them to pull stuff out of the ground) when the root is starting to show above ground. I use this rule of thumb for carrots, too.

2. Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

3. Wash the beets and remove the tiny ancillary roots.

4. Remove the greens.

5. Place the beets on a sheet of aluminum foil and drizzle with oil (I used olive).

5. Seal up the beets in the aluminum foil.

6. Bake for about 45-60 minutes. This is a great time to prepare your beet greens for a salad. Your beets will be done when you can cut through them easily with a fork.

7. Peel the skin off the beets. This can be done easily using your fingers.

Now your beets are ready for eating. If you want to use them in a salad, simply let them cool off first.

Beets are really fun to grow, and a tasty addition to your table.  Have a good time in the garden.  Happy harvesting.

Cheers!