Reevaluating the Beet

When I was a little girl, my mother tried to force-feed me borscht, but the thick Slavic beet soup made me gag and cry. These days, I’ve come to love beets, but my roommate and resident taste-tester is still wary of the root. Rather than respect and conform to her gastronomic prejudices, I trick her into eating them instead. Who would expect to find beets in a pasta dish? Mwahaha!

“What’s this?” she asks, eyeing a ruby-colored sliver.

“It’s a beet,” I reply, nonchalantly digging in. “You’ll like it, it’s sweet.”

“Ew. I don’t like beets.” She nudges it to the edge of her plate.

“Just eat the frigging beet,” I growl through clenched teeth. “I put food on the table and you’ll eat it!”

In every woman’s life, there comes a moment when she realizes she’s become her mother. I’m only 21, but it seems my time has come. Nevertheless, mothers know a little something—after all that fuss, my roommate did end up liking the beet. And you will too, even if you harbor a vestigial childhood fear of the vegetable which Waverly Root calls “unspectacular but widespread” in his historic dictionary of food. Sounds harmless enough, no?

Take heart! It’s the perfect time of year to embrace the beet in all its mild-mannered versatility. According to the calendar, this is the first week of spring, and you may have tan lines from your vacation in Cancun, but look out the window—there aren’t too many kids smokin’ da hookah on Lowe Steps in this weather. This in-between season is too warm for hearty winter meals and too cool for summer fare, but beets provide an intermediate solution. Even their vibrant magenta color will brighten your plate when the sky outside is grey and the winds of March are howling.

Begin the brave foray into beets with a tasty pot of borscht; this kind is more like vegetable soup than the pureed stuff my mom used to dribble down my chin. Accompanied by crusty bread and cheese, the soup will make a healthy, comforting meal on a chilly evening.

As the days warm up into spring, toss together a beet salad for lunch. The sweetness of the beets balances out the bitter radicchio and tart vinegar; the Roquefort and walnuts add heft to make this salad a light, refreshing meal eaten on its own.

One caveat—fresh beets have to be roasted before you use them in these dishes. If you’ve got a lot of time on your hands, you can cook them yourself. Just wash and trim the beets, wrap them in foil, place them in a baking dish, and roast for one hour until tender at 350 F. Then peel the tough skin from the flesh of the beet and chop or slice as you desire. Personally, I find the sliced beets in a can to be perfectly acceptable. Just be careful the gorgeous red juice doesn’t stain you and your kitchen. There may be a home remedy for getting out beet stains, but if there is, I don’t know it; that might be a job for your mother.