How To Cook Beets

Delicious beets! Earthy beets! It’s like a potato only redder and better and actually nothing like a potato!

But you can pretty much cook them like a potato.

Barbee from Barbeesblogspot asked about cooking these things and although I am not known for my cooking, I definitely love the beets and can cook them.

Baked Beets

Definitely my favorite way to eat beets. Go ahead and drop your beets into a baking dish with a cover for later. The roots and stems should be trimmed off to about 1/2″. Don’t bother peeling the beet. You can add some butter and salt and pepper if you’d like. Seal the baking dish up with the lid and some foil. Bake at 400 F for an hour to an hour and a half. Once they are cool enough to handle, you can peel the skin off pretty easily.

I eat them just like this. A little vinegar perhaps. Some butter.

Skillet Beets

I also might take some of the baked beets, slice them up, get them into a skillet with some butter, a bit of sugar or honey and some salt and pepper. Delicious.

Cooked Beet Greens

Completely delicious. If you like chard or collard greens etc. you’ll love beet greens. They are best when they are smallish, but I cook them when they are huge too. Stems and all.

Wash the greens and only pat dry them. You want some water. Add some butter to a skillet. I put in some honey and/or a bit of garlic. Cut your greens into strips or tear them up.. whatever. Put them in the skillet and stir. It will only take 10 seconds or so.

It’s a lot like this recipe from guest blogger Chris. In fact, you could completely substitute the beet greens for chard.

Enjoy!

Filed under: beets , cooking beets, growing challenge

State Of The Stuff: What’s Growing

It’s May 18 and just about everything is in my garden.  I’m holding off on tomatoes and peppers for another week because it’s supposed to be pretty cold and wet for about 5 or 6 days.  I’ve got some tomoatoes just sitting out in the garden getting used to the place and I’ve still got several transplants under the growlights.  Can’t wait.

Beans checking out their pole

Beet sprouts

Broccoli (Gastrocast)

Started from seed 3/25

Green rows

Bean teepee

Potatoes looking pretty

Wasp is thirsty

Pole Beans: They’ve been in the dirt for 3 weeks and are just poking their little muppet heads out now.  I’ve got a few varieties.  Should be spectacular.

Bush Beans: Same story as above.  Just a few poking up now.  I’m a little worried, but we’ll see what the week brings.  If they don’t pop, I’ll just replant.  Plenty of time for beans.

Beets: 3 good rows have been in since May 4 and they are popping very nicely.  These are the ones I’m using for the Growing Challenge.  So far, so good.

Greens: Mesclun transplants have been made into many a meal already.  Delicious.  The staggered plantings I’ve done have all sprouted at various stages.  I’ve got about 3 successions.  Tom Thumb lettuce, chard, oak leaf, mesclun, tyee spinach, space saver spinach, arugula, miners lettuce are all doing well.

Peas: Carouby de Mausanne and Cascadia.  The peas in the earthbox are about 8 inches now.  They’ve been going since the end of March.  The peas in the garden are about 4 inches and were planted mid April. 

Carrots: Not a whole lot happening here.  They’ve been in since 5/4.   Just a couple of little peekers.

Radishes: Black radishes are doing great.  They’ve been in since 5/4.  Radish mix that I have going in a container on the deck (planted chaotically.. we’ll see) are doing well too.

Broccoli: Just a few plants.  Two are transplants and they are absolutely thriving so far.  Foot tall already.  The third is a transplant from the seeds I got as part of the Gastrocast’s seed special.  It was a bit sickly early on, but recovered very well.  I popped it into the garden yesterday.

Cucumbers: Just put in a Bush Crop.  Six plants.  I had so many cukes last year that I cut down a bit.

Potatoes: Bigger patch than last year and they have all sprouted.  The potatoes are approaching the 4 inch mark and I’ll need to get some straw going soon.

 

Filed under: Peas, beets, growing challenge, potato, vegetable garden, vegetables , beans, chard, lettuce, mesclun, Peas, pole beans, potatoes, spinach, tomatoes, vegetable garden

Beet Sowing

Truly accomplished gardeners – especially those who follow the intense market garden practices – would sow beets like crazy, scattered almost haphazardly without concern for the symmetry of rows.  Truly accomplished gardeners would use beets as part of a rotation of crops, interplanting them, thinning them, moving them, encouraging the overlapping of leaves for the cooling impact on the soil around the swelling roots.

I am not truly accomplished so I plant in rows.

Ultimately, you want beets to be about 3 inches apart from one another on all sides with the leaves brushing one another gently, fanning the soil and keeping the heat down.  Beets grow with their tops exposed (beets gone wild) just slightly and they are demure little things – keep em covered! 

Get the soil turned and loosened to about 6 inches with a pitchfork or shovel or your bare hands so that you’ll never get the dirt out from underneath your fingernails no matter how long you soak them in the tub while your son is in there.  Get rid of any rocks (I had lots) and make sure you’ve broken up any soil clumping parties. 

I used a stake to make a shallow indentation of about 1/4 inch.  Drop your seeds in (soaked the night before) and space them a few inches apart.  Cover lightly.  Go buy yourself some vinegar and wait…

These beets are what I’m using for the Growing Challenge.

Filed under: beets, growing challenge, vegetable garden , beets, growing challenge, vegetable garden

Beet Soaking

As a part of the Podchef’s Gastrocast Seed Special, I got some great beet seeds. I’m using them as my entry in the Growing Challenge.

Step one for beet planting (they get sowed directly) is to soak them. Soaking the seeds prior to planting them allows water to penetrate through the husk. The seed will do its work and absorb the water and since it is not competing with soil for the absorption, it gets a big ol’ dose that kick starts germination. A 24-hour soaking is about enough. (Soaking is not a good idea with all seed types.)

Here are the soaking pictures. Looks like grape nuts. Delicious.

Filed under: beets, growing challenge , beets, growing challenge, soaking seeds

Beets: Friend Or Foe?

Friend! Especially their delicious green tops. And actually the fruity rooty part too. Good for you too.

I’ve never grown them and I’m going to try just a few this year. In preparation, I found this very cool blog about it from In My Kitchen Garden (an offshoot of farmgirlfare). Great information.

Direct sowing is the way to go. Soak em a bit. Stick em in the dirt.

If it goes well, I’m going to go for a late summer sowing also.

Filed under: beets, vegetable garden, vegetables , beets, vegetable garden