How To Roast And Freeze Beets

For some reason beets seem to be a pretty divisive vegetable- you either like them or you think they taste like "dirt."

Personally, I don't get it. I mean, we can buy beet sugar for pete's sake. And I like the slightly sweet, deep flavor of beets almost any way: pickled, boiled, roasted, grated raw in salads, or even as beet "chips."

But I'm the lone beet-liker ("beet-liker?" Do you think this phrase will catch on?) in my family. The kids won't touch them and Brian merely puts up with them. So I don't serve them often and I don't grow a ton of them, just a couple of rows. However, when those rows are ready to be harvested I have the dilemma of too many beets all at once for just little ol' me and then none for the future months.

Since a few small rows never made enough to be canned or pickled, I wondered how to preserve them so I could stop the cycle of feast or famine (pretty dramatic, huh? I guess I like my beets...). I couldn't find anything a few years ago on the Internet about freezing them, but I decided to give it a try with just a few I had roasted.

Surprisingly, they tasted just as good after a couple months in the freezer as they did the day I roasted them. So I made my favorite salad with them (Roasted Beet Salad with Goat Cheese) and served it to company.

Um, didn't I just say beets are divisive...and I served a salad with beets to company? Yeah, I guess I didn't get it- but I thought I was safe because they were gardeners, and don't most gardeners grow beets?

Well, not the one sitting at my table. He promptly said, "Beets are the one vegetable I don't eat" and proceeded to give me the dirt analogy.

Gee, I'm good- all the vegetables on the planet and I pick the one he didn't eat.

Of course I said he didn't have to eat them, but he decided to try them. The verdict?

"These are the best beets I've ever eaten. They don't taste like beets!"

Whatever that means.

Now I make sure to grow enough to be able to freeze small packages to last through the winter.



I'm going to list every step because I didn't know how to prepare beets when I first started growing them and I'm sure that there are people out there who may be as clueless as I was (please tell me I'm not alone...). Of course, this is just one method, but some of the steps are the same no matter how you cook them.

Start by washing the beets thoroughly with a vegetable brush (which I would've shown you, except I couldn't figure out how to get a picture when both my hands were needed...) in order to get all the...umm...dirt off.(You know, one of the reasons I don't get the dirt comment about beets is because other vegetables like carrots and potatoes grow in the dirt too- don't they?).

Trim the greens off, leaving about an inch of the tops. Trim the roots as well.



Place the beets in a shallow baking dish and pour in about 1/4 cup of water.

I suppose this isn't true "roasting" like when we toss vegetables with olive oil (which you can do with beets, by the way... they get nice crispy edges which is great for that application, but not what I want on a salad...), but it's like roasting beef, I guess. Or is it oven braising?

We'll just stick with roasting for now.



Cover well with foil and bake in a 400 degree oven for 45 minutes to an hour, depending on the size of the beets.



I check doneness by inserting a small knife into the thickest parts of the beets. The beets pictured, which are small to medium, took 45 minutes.



Cut the tops and bottoms off and skin the beets by pulling with a small knife. Some directions say to put gloves on and "rub the skins off" but that hasn't worked well for me. And I don't wear gloves- I just wash my hands afterwards and don't have a problem with staining. Maybe because I'm only doing a small amount at a time?



Cut the beets into chunks or slices- however you want to serve them later. I like chunks that are easy to add to a salad.



Place them in a baggie, label and put in the freezer. I remove the air from my freezer baggies with a straw and it keeps most of the frost out of the packages.

I like to use these within 6 months, but one time a few baggies got shoved in the back of my freezer and I found them a year later. I served them anyway and was shocked that they were still pretty tasty.

However, a baggie I found after 1-1/2 years didn't fare as well and the beets were shriveled and soggy.

Of course this was before I had the chalkboard freezer organizer. I never find old packages shoved in the back anymore...*wink*

-Jami
This is linked to:
Real Food Wednesday