Even You Can Cook Fresh Beets!

Roasted Beets

I absolutely love eating beets!  To me they are one of the most delicious foods there is, they are sweet, not too soft and you can do a couple of fun things with them.  Making Harvard Beets with my Mom was how I discovered the amazing thing that cornstarch and water do together.  If you have never seen it you have to give it a try, its somewhere between a liquid and a solid, it will pour but if you try to stick a spoon in it the whole thing cracks!  Jen has a name for it but there is no way I could even come close to spelling it!

Well enough about the cornstarch, back to beets!  I have seen fresh beets in the store for years but have always been afraid to cook them so instead I would buy them canned.  As a matter of fact beets have been one of the very few things I buy in cans, when I can't get to the vegetable bin and for some of the veggies that just require too much work for even me I depend on frozen.  They still have their nutrients in them, are cost effective especially when on sale and have no added stuff.  It's the veggies and only the veggies!

A few months ago I finally got brave and bought some fresh beets when I was shopping, they sat in the fridge for quite a while (thankfully root vegetables do not have a very short shelf life) until I decided I had to do something with them! 

So there I was the beets and no idea how to cook them!!  Would my hands turn purple (if it is going to happen you know I would be the one with the purple hands) how do you get the skin off them?  How do you cut them....the questions went on and on.

Off to the Internet I went only to find out that you can either grill or roast beets with the skin on!!  How easy is that?  My first beet endeavor was on the grill.  I simply cut both ends off the beets, quartered them, threw them in some foil with a bit of olive oil, closed up the foil and threw them on the grill.  Now one thing I have to tell you is that the folks that say they cook in a half in hour can't tell time!  Those suckers were on the grill for closer to an hour and a half but boy did they taste good when they were done!

On one of my last trips downtown I once again bought beets, there were no smaller ones available so I got four rather largish ones.  Once again they sat in the fridge and yesterday I decided that they have to be cooked.  I decided to roast them since goodness knows its not hot enough here already and I must warm the house up more with the oven!  I followed the same directions as before but this time I didn't quarter them, into the 350 degree oven they went to roast for two hours. 

I am not sure what I will do with them next, they could just be sliced and warmed with some butter or pickled (which is not as tough as it sounds).  What ever I decide to do with them will have to happen tomorrow since if I do it today and leave for Michael with his chicken for tonight chances are he will not eat them. 

Bear had to have his picture taken when I took the camera out.  It was tough to get him to sit still for this one since there was not only the camera but food on the stove!