How to Use All of a BEET

I grew the most amazing beets in my garden this year. I don't want to waste any part of these amazing root vegetable. This meal uses every bit, down to the trimmings and the beet tails.

Harvest and Clean

First of all you need to go and get your beets from the garden (or grocery store) and get off all of the dirt.

Chopping

The next step is to chop up the beets into the different parts of use:

The beet greens and nice stalks
The beets
The trimmings and undesirables
- These were particularly nice beets so I didn't skin them. Some of my beets have wormholes or tough skin which I would put in this category.

I put the trimmings into a pot right away.

Beets

I like to roast my beets in a bit of coconut oil. I also threw in some of my garden dill.

I put them in the oven at 350 degree for about 20 minutes.

Trimmings

At the same time as putting the beets in the oven, I put the trimmings on to boil with a small amount of water (about 1/2 cup). I let these simmer for most of the 20 minutes at a low temperature.

The goal is to get as much goodness out of the trimmings as possible.

Once this is complete, strain the juice that results into a glass.

The Greens

I had quite a lot of greens from these beets. About half I mixed with other salad greens and put in the fridge to use in a salad tomorrow (picture 2).

The rest, I sauteed along with some garden kale and swiss chard with a bit of garlic (photo 1). I did this towards the end of the 20 minutes so that everything would be hot once the whole beets were finished cooking. I also added some tomato into the mix.

The Whole-beet Meal

I plated my beets and sauteed greens with a fried egg and a bit of avocado. Delicious!

The beet juice I mixed with a bit of maple syrup and drank straight. You can also mix this with other veggie or fruit juices, or even use it for painting!

Following my meal plan was not the idea for this instructable - more the point that you can use all of the parts of the amazing beet.

For anyone who has read Tom Robbin's Jitterbug Perfume, you know that the beet should not be underestimated :)