I roast them with salt, olive oil, rosemary and some maple syrup and balsamic vinegar. One common way people get the "dirt" flavor out of beets (or at least use it to advantage by contrasting it), is to mix the beets with something acidic, like orange juice or cider or balsamic vinegar. You could use a little dill instead of the rosemary, or leave out the spices all together. Just a little bit of acid, like a TBLSP to start. And just a tiny sprinkling of sugar. You might look for a jar of "natural" seasonings in the store, usually a mix of sugar, salt, pepper, lemon peel, onions and maybe garlic. That's a great sprinkle for roasting vegetables. But use a light hand.

Oh, and duh I forgot the obvious advice, ask the hostess for her recipe. That's how I got started roasting vegetables, I had some awesome ones at a work potluck once and asked my co-worker for her recipe.

This post was edited by lpinkmountain on Sun, Sep 21, 14 at 13:47

I don't perceive a "dirt" taste in beets, so I can't say exactly what you'd need to not taste dirt, but it is easy enough to experiment.

Start with several beets peeled and quartered. Keep one batch very basic: toss in olive oil and salt. Add a little sugar to the second batch. A little vinegar to the third. Both sugar and vinegar to the fourth. Roast them all in the same oven, even in the same sheet pan with foil separators, and do a taste test.

The next time, try boiling the quartered beets until they are mostly done, then tossing, seasoning and roasting. That speeds things up a lot.

Thanks for the replies! I should have clarified that any beets I've ever tried were not prepared by me, and more often than not they were Harvard beets because I love vinegar and couldn't resist the way they smelled. lol!

lpink, given my Harvard beets experiences, I don't think it's the acid that makes a difference for me with the dirt taste. Unfortunately, I can't ask the cook from yesterday because the event was catered by a local restaurant and they don't tell anything! :p

johnliu, that's a great idea for experimentation! Now to find some good beets...

Thanks again!

Also, peel your beets before roasting. Sometimes the outside of the beet gets dried out and picks up a dirt taste. If I have really big beets sometimes I parboil and the outside skin slips off and then I can dice and roast. The key is to add a little broth or wine to the roasting pan so the veggies don't dry out and get leathery.

Here's the recipe from my former co-worker great cook Bev. It calls for 2 lbs carrots, 2-3 potatoes, 3 turnips, 1 med. rutabaga, 4-8 parsnips, i yellow onion and 3 beets, so reduce accordingly, lol! That's why I just use the combo of ingredients as a flavor guide, rather than follow her exact recipe. Rarely would I have that much produce around, but Bev had four kids so she knows how to cook for a crowd!

1 cup low fat chicken broth (she uses low sodium, so do I). Normally I just wait a while and then add a tiny bit of broth or wine to the bottom of the pan as the veggies finish roasting, to keep them moist and from sticking to the bottom. If I use broth, then I will also add a shake of balsamic vinegar, but do not need to do that if you use wine. Red wine goes good with beets. Could use cider vinegar if you don't have balsamic on hand. But just a little bit, like no more than i TBLSP or even half a TBLSP to start, which is 1.5 tsp.
1/4 cup olive oil (when I do veggies I just eyeball it, I lightly douse the pan with evoo and stir to coat evenly.)
2 tsp. ground rosemary (You can leave this out, or use dill. Again, I don't measure, I just lightly dust the veggies with the herb and stir to distribute evenly. Less is more with rosemary.)
Salt and pepper as desired.
1 tsp. sugar (I usually use maple syrup, again, just a very light drizzle)

I second the peeling. Some people don't peel their beets (think carrots brushed or peeled), which is sometimes okay, but I don't like the texture of the skin and agree it could be part of the "dirt" feeling. If you don't want to par boil, you can steam or just roast in your heating ovens for a few minutes to loosen the peel. Or you can use a peeler. If you do that, use a food service glove to hold the beets with to keep from having red or orange hands.

Try baby beets first if you can find them. They're more of a bother to peel, but very sweet and delicious. Until you're sure of yourself, try to avoid the really big ones. They can be woody. Still good if roasted long enough, but it takes some experience to get them right.

Look for dark, rich looking beets with fresh, green leaves and firm roots. The greens can be a bit bitter but they're nutritious and are great cooked as you might any greens such as kale or collards, torn up in a salad with lettuce or something similar that's sweeter and softer, or thrown into a soup or stew.

Bev's recipe via Lpinkmountain sounds good.

I have a feeling, however, that part of what made what you ate so good was butter. Buttered beets is a classic dish, and restaurants often use butter on everything. There are all kinds of ways to make them, some of which are kind of appalling. Just roast your beets as suggested, cut if they're whole, and toss with a little butter over heat.

I love beets! And Pllog is right, I was thinking the same thing, probably tasted good because they had a nice coating of butter on them too! I love beets lightly steamed with a little butter and salt and dash of dill. But that would work with little cute ones. Big beets can get woody, just like big carrots, etc. Those you would maybe dice and use for borscht or something like that. But small fresh beets are another animal all together. I sure wish they weren't so expensive. $2.49 for 3 small beets at my local grocery, which I weighed and was 1 lb. I won't be buying them at that price. Last year I could get all I wanted because my SO's co-worker had a big garden and always gave us beets.

My suggestion:

Start eating golden beets. They are milder and sweeter. Eat them a few times and you can graduate to the deep purple ones.

Boil them in water first also minimize some of the strong beet taste.

dcarch

Beets have two interesting effects.

The red ones turn your pee red. Don't be alarmed, its beet juice, not blood and lasts a day max.

Beet juice lowers blood pressure (because it has a lot of nitrates, becomes nitric oxide, which is a vasodilator). The effect may not be large from just a typical serving of beets (in the studies, subjects drank 17 oz of beet juice and BP declined 4-5 pts) and is temporary. But still interesting, especially if one has hypertension, and it wouldn't be hard to do one's own experiment.

I agree with dcarch. I started with golden beets. Chioggia beeets are also milder than the deep red beets. Once I developed a taste for beets with those, I was able to start liking the deep purple ones.

This is all good information for me! I've never actually looked for beets in the local stores or at farm stands, but I'm certain I have seen them on occasion... red only, and I have no idea what they cost around here. :p Glad to know to get the smaller ones, and I will definitely peel them before roasting and then make certain they don't dry out. Good to know about wearing gloves to avoid staining while peeling, as well as their other interesting dye effects. :)

I didn't detect any butter taste on the beets I had yesterday, but knowing that a bit of sugar might have been added definitely makes sense.

Thanks everyone!

Beet greens are delicious.

When I buy beets I always look for the ones with good green tops. You can also get free beet greens because many people just leave the greens in the store.

When I get home. I first cook the greens. I plant the beet bulbs (roots) in water like planting avocado seeds. In a few days, more beet greens. After a few rounds of harvesting the tops, then I cook the beets.

dcarch

I like beets but have only prepared them out of a can. My mom only did what she called pickled beets -- which I see as probably Harvard beets (onion sugar and vinegar?) or baby beets cooked with orange and a little butter. I generally like them in veggie combinations or salads, but to be honest, I've avoided preparing them fresh because I assumed I would have to peel them and they would be a mess -- a la pomegranates and red everywhere, stained hands, yuk, not worth it.

So, what I'm getting from reading this thread is that I've suffered from a lack of information and there is an easier way. If you partially cook them and then peel them, you won't wind up with red hands and mess everywhere?

Pickled beets and Harvard beets are not the same at all, at least not in the traditional use of either term.

Traditional harvard beets are in a thick cornstarchy sauce, usually sweetened. Kind of the opposite of a pickled beet.

I use rubber gloves when I peel beets. I often use them for tomatoes and onions too, to protect my hands. I always have them handy because I use them when washing dishes.

Lascatx, I honestly don't think there's a good way to avoid red hands without wearing vinyl gloves. I "roast" beets a little differently from what has been described here. I just scrub the individual beets and place them in a baking dish (usually a Pyrex-style pan) with a spritz of water and a good drizzle of oil. I bake them in my oven or small Nesco at 350 degrees for about an hour.

Once I can easily pierce them with a skewer, I take the pan out of the oven to cool. I leave the peel on until it's time to serve them. I refrigerate the leftover, unpeeled beets. The skins just slip off easily, but there's still some red on my hands when I'm done. As I said before, I don't think you can avoid the red when you're handling the dark beets -- whether peeling them raw, partially cooked, or fully cooked as I do.

That said, golden beets are not messy at all. And there's a lighter, pinkish beet that doesn't leave behind a lot of color.

The lighter beet might be the Chioggia beet which is striped darkish pink and white but depending how it is cooked, the color evens out when cooking to a pink.

Lascatx, on a mess scale, I'd put red beets way below pomegranates. I'm willing to prepare beets but I avoid pomegranates. The red from beets doesn't try to pop out and spray around. It just gets on my hands and drips into the sink or bowl a bit where it is easily rinsed off. If doing a big batch, I might wear an apron. I generally don't use a glove and I end up with a bit of pink stain on my hand but it doesn't last that long.

Beets are also less work than pomegranates - you are just peeling and slicing a bit, not untangling seeds from pith.

If they are baby beets where the skin seems smooth and not so thick, I'll sometimes just give them a scrub and cut off the top and tip leaving the rest of the skin on.

I agree that red beets aren't as messy as pomegranates, but they're still pretty messy. The stains don't seem as permanent.

Yellow beets stain my hands as much as red beets do.

I get two kinds of gloves at the catering supply store (I'm sure Amazon and many others have them too). They're inexpensive and great for the purpose. One is like a glove shaped Alligator Baggie (if anyone remembers those...I think they still make them but they're rare where I shop). The other is more like a rubber glove, though probably vinyl. The baggie style ones are great for things like beets. They're thin, cheap, recyclable if your area does "films", and you can slip them on and off easily and leave them in the sink, to do other chores, answer the phone, or whatever. The others are tight, and good for fiddly jobs where you want a good fit, or physical ones, like cleaning poultry.

Neither beets nor pomegranates have to stain your kitchen, if you're careful. It helps to work in a large bowl or even a roasting pan.

I love pickled beets! I should make some. They used to just appear in my life, but haven't recently. I love them when they're julienned--the squared sides are fun to eat.

Another thing you can do with small or baby beets, or cut up ones, is glaze them. Nobody seems to do glazes anymore--the kind where it's the outer layer of the veg that does it, not syrup, honey or sugar. You only add a little sugar or leave it out entirely and worry the veg over an ultra low heat for a very long time to use only the sugars naturally in it. Glazing doesn't have to take a lot of effort, though. I usually do it for a mixed dish for Passover, and in such quantity that I'm over it for half a year, but for a normal dinner with only one vegetable, it's not a big deal. I also use dried fruit instead of any refined sugar, so it takes longer. On a quick search, I found a kind of smarmy but very detailed article on the classic way to glaze with just a spot of sugar, that explains it better than I could. Follow the links and you'll find a beet recipe.

Thanks everyone. I have done pomegranates and didn't get my kitchen stained, but didn't feel it was really worth all the effort and fuss for what was 2/3 seed and 1/3 tart red around the seed. I put beets into that same category without trying them, but at least al of what you have left is worth eating.

Pllog, I do know alligator baggies and the gloves you are talking about. I have some -- I bought more when my brother was here and we were painting because he said they were the only ones large enough for his hands. The only place I can find them is the dollar store, but I try to keep some on hand.

My island and prep space are not marble, so I can work with beets there and not be too worried. May not wear my linen apron even though it's my favorite, but I will have to give them a try.

And thanks for letting me know about the Harvard beets. Guess I've never had those -- I just saw a mention of vinegar and thought that's what was meant.