My memories of beets consist ofthembeing pickled in a jar and my dad putting them on almost everything he ate, turning his mashed potatoes a crazy pink color. I just thought what the heck, maybe he liked pink.
It wasn't until fairly recently that I discovered they didn't have to always be like that. Roasting beets makes for a very different taste, gettin' all sweet and crispythey'realmost like candy.
There's purple beets and golden beets, white beets and even striped beets but the two most common you'll see in the store are purple and golden. The purple bleed like crazy so take a rain check on wearing that white shirt while you prep them.
Many people wrap the beets in foil before throwing them in the oven but to me that just means your preventing the oven heat from doing it's magic.
Sure they'll still cook and taste great but they wont be roasted, they'll be steamed. I chopped my beets into largish chunks and tossed them with some olive oil, rosemary, oregano, salt and pepper. I didn't peel the beets hoping that the heat would do that for me and it worked, but it meant pulling off each piece of skin from every chunk.
No biggie as the skin came of easy, I would hate to waste any of the beet by peeling them before they were roasted.
I like to keep the two colors away from each other just because the golden are such a cool color but don't worry if you get them together. Beets can seem like hard work but they just need some planning.
Chop em' toss em' and throw them in the oven then kick back and watch some Ellen and you'll be happy you did when dinner time rolls around.So what do you eat them with?
You could just eat them as they are from the oven...or you could mix them with a salad. Beets are usually mixed with goat cheese and some kind of nut.
I used some crumbled Roquefort and candied pecans for a sweet touch with a drizzle of olive oil and they tasted golden! Go roast some beets!
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