Beets anyone??

I like raw or lightly steamed beets finely chopped and seasoned with olive oil, lemon juice and salt.

I get in the market Melinda's beets (Produce section), that are already cooked. My mother's salad recipe, as I remember it and how I prepare the beets, is as follows:

Beets, avocado, boiled potatoes, hard boiled egg, and tomatoes. Seasoned with salt, pepper and olive oil, and couple of times I added cooked shrimp for more protein power. It could be a nice side dish or complete meal.

I "roast" beets in my crockpot - I just wrap them in foil (not required, but makes clean up easier). You can rub them with oil first, or not. It's hard to make a mistake. I cook them on low, 6-8 hours. The skin slips off easily and they are ready for anything.

I make beets shots that are amazing! I juice 6-7 beets, 3 lemons and an inch of ginger...I then divide them up into 3 oz mason jars! I do one shot after breakfast and another before my afternoon workout! They give me a ton of energy and I highly recommend them!

so so good, I do soup and eat it cold or hot. lowers blood pressure right away!

I roasted one red and one yellow beet last night, and I'm a bit obsessed with this new (to me) preparation.
I cut them up into about 1 inch chunks, tossed them with about 1/2 Tbsp of coconut oil, and then took 1 tsp salt, 1 tsp garlic powder and 1 tsp rosemary and ground that up together and sprinkled it over the beets. I roasted them at 400 degrees for about 25 minutes.

I had made them to take for lunches, but ate about half of them right off the pan. They are delicious!

Beet chips

Not plant based, but my favorite is baked with some goat cheese!!! YUM!

Try slices of raw or cooked betroot with lots of mint - and yoghurt too if you want. Very good combo.

Or 'pop' lots of mustard seeds in a small amount hot oil and pour over matchsticks of raw betroot. Delicious.

Or add cooked beets to corn beef hash - fab

Or use in chocolate cake (honest!)

I love beets and recently decided to do my own. I bought a bunch of 5 raw beets from a local farm shop and they still had their full leafy greens attached (some places trim these off but they are really tasty)....I digress.

Heat your oven to 200c, trim the leafy greens off, but leave a bit of the stalk on as it makes it better to hold later. Using a veggie brush or stiff nail brush, give the beets a good scrubbing to remove any dirt under running water. Then wrap each beet in its own foil parcel (don’t dry the beets, the remaining water helps them to not dry out when cooking). Put the beet parcels on a tray and roast in oven for approx. 1 hour or until a skewer goes through easily. Cooking time depends on size, my beets are usually 2-3” diameter.

Once cooked, remove and open parcels to let them cool for enough time to handle them. You can use kitchen paper towel to ‘wipe’ the soft skin from each beet rather than needing to peel them.

I store them whole in a sealed container in fridge for a week. If you want to eat some warm, make a dressing using horseradish mustard loosened with a drop of milk or water. Otherwise experiment with vinegar or citrus based dressings. I like a dash of honey with some chilli flakes before adding something sour like balsamic vinegar, orange juice or pomegranate vinegar as the sour base.

Now the greens. Trim the woody red stalks off up to the leaves (if the stalks are thin then you could keep some of them), chops the leaves and sauté with good quality olive oil, sea salt, chilli flakes, pepper and crushed garlic. The leaves are like spinach/kale so wilt down really quick. They are slightly bitter so pair well as a side to a sweet tomatoey homemade aubergine (eggplant) parmagian.....drooling now