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Avoid beets staining other veggies?

12 years ago

Is there a way? I'll be roasting a few different root veggies together, but I would prefer if they could all keep their own unique colors. I had planned to blot them, but I'm not sure that would help much. Something inside me is saying that I should soak them in ice water- would this help or hurt?

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Comments (6)

dcarch7 d c f l a s h 7 @ y a h o o . c o m
12 years ago
Nothing will help. roast them separate.

dcarch
shambo
12 years ago
I usually roast beets whole in their skins. I package them in foil with a drizzle of olive oil and peel them once cooked through and cooled slightly. I'm assuming you want to peel the beets and cut them into chunks or slices before roasting. I'd just make an aluminum foil "boat" for them. Put the boat in the big roasting pan you use, over to one side. The beets will roast with the other vegetables but be separated. No bleeding. If you go wild tossing all the cooked vegetables together, the beets might give off some color. So you could do a quick blot before combining everything. But I don't think soaking in ice water would make any difference.
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I usually plant all my garden at the same time. I first concentrate on eating the early, cool season plants: lettuce, spinach, radishes, etc. Then early corn, and some early tomatoes show up, then beans and cucumbers and I forget everything else, for a while. Finally the beets bulge up way above ground, and I start eating them. You beet boilers should try roasting them! I wash them off, dry, and cut stem and root to about an inch. I use a glass baking dish, and cover it with foil. Roast at 400 F. for about 75 to 90 minutes for a 2" beet, less for 1" or 1 1/2" beets. Let cool in the dish. Put on your latex glove, slip the skins off, slice, look up a recipe for "Harvard Beets", cook them up, and enjoy! This year, if the rain ever quits and I can plant my garden, I am going to try some golden and some white beets along with the red ones. Perhaps I will not have to use a latex glove to avoid "getting caught red-handed". They also grow well in my greenhouse over the winter and spring. I have some beets in there (and carrots) that are ready to harvest now.
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I don't have a recipe, but what I did was: - 1 lb of a 50/50 mix of wild rice and brown rice (I just happened across this in the grocery store.) - In 12'' saute pan, saute the rice, 1/2 onion diced, couple cloves of garlic, in olive oil over medium heat for about 10 min. - Add 1 cup of liquid (big cloud of steam here) and a pat of butter, stir a couple times. Reduce heat to low. Pan is not covered. - When liquid is almost gone, add another cup of liquid (and, every other time, another pat of butter), and stir a couple times. - What ''liquid''? I used about 2/3rds wine (went though about 3/4 bottle of cheap chardonnay, drank the rest) and about 1/3rds chicken stock. Just switch back and forth capriciously. - Start this about 3 hours before mealtime, after the initial saute it only requires 15 seconds of attention every 15 minutes or so. The dish doesn't show any signs of becoming creamy until about 1.5 hours in. At that point start tasting before each cup of liquid. In my case, after 2.5 hours it was as creamy as I wanted, so I just turned off the heat and covered it. Shortly before serving, give it a splash of chicken stock, a blast of heat, salt to taste. - Compared to risotto from short-grain white rice, the wild rice risotto tends to be a little less creamy, the grains are more distinct. Its a more interesting texture, to me. But I suspect that you can get it as creamy as you like, simply with more time and more liquid. - Sliced shiitake mushrooms are nice. But daughter loathes mushrooms, picks every piece out of her food, gagging and moaning, grossed-out face and accusing looks. We were having company, so I decide to skip the show. Instead, I added crumbled crispy bacon. Everything's Better With Bacon.
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weedlady, I knew that about carrots, but I'll be darned if I remember where I read it, maybe from one of the seed companies? Anyway, I like the purple ones, although they stain my fingers longer than beets do, and I like the white ones, I think they are the sweetest. And I need to get myself up to the garden tomorrow and get the rest of my beets and carrots out of there. The parsnips can wait until spring or until I get "around to it". Annie
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John Liu
12 years ago
Just fyi the staining quality of beets is usually irritating, but is occasionally useful.

Beet juice is a decent home substitute for red food coloring (red #40). I use it, for example, to make char sui red and therefore "lucky" in the Chinese context. One of these days I will make some red ice cream.

Anyone know other ingredients that can be easily used to color foods? I found this list on wikipedia. I've used tumeric and paprika, their coloring effect is rather modest. Grinding up red beetles is a little beyond me. What's a good blue - like, if one wanted to make blue french fries?

"Caramel coloring (E150), made from caramelized sugar
Annatto (E160b), a reddish-orange dye made from the seed of the achiote.
Chlorophyllin (E140), a green dye made from chlorella algae
Cochineal (E120), a red dye derived from the cochineal insect, Dactylopius coccus
Betanin (E162) extracted from beets
Turmeric (curcuminoids, E100)
Saffron (carotenoids, E160a)
Paprika (E160c)
Elderberry juice
Pandan (Pandanus amaryllifolius), a green food coloring
Butterfly pea (Clitoria ternatea), a blue food dye"
donna_loomis
12 years ago
Johnliu, red/purple cabbage turns blue when boiled. If you soaked the uncooked cut up potatoes in the water that the cabbage was cooked in, they might pull some color from that. Just a thought.
Olychick
12 years ago
Use blue/purple potatoes
annie1992
12 years ago
I agree with olychick, just use the blue potatoes. They stay blue when cooked and if you add milk and butter and mash them, they turn a lovely lilac. They taste just like any other potato, though and make an interesting shepherd's pie with the leftovers. (grin)

We grew some and saved enough for Thanksgiving dinner one year. The ex-inlaws wouldn't eat them because they looked weird, but we liked them. They also made a nice red, white and blue potato salad for the 4th of July, mixed with sweet potatoes and some baby red potatoes (which we all know are actually white in the middle).

ynnej, I think Shambo is right, your best bet is to separate them from the rest of the vegetables with foil. I love beets.....

Annie

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