Quick Pickled Beet Salad #FoodieExtravaganza

Fresh cooked beets, lightly seasoned and covered with sliced onions can be quick pickled with vinegar to make a lovely bright salad for beet lovers. It gets better and better as it marinates in the refrigerator so don’t be afraid of making this salad a day ahead. 

Even when I was a young girl, this was one of my favorite side dishes. To the best of my recollection (and I am sure my mom will write to set me straight, if need be) my grandmother and mother always made it with canned beets. But perhaps that was just a modern convenience that came into fashion in the ’60 and ‘70s. I do not recall ever seeing a fresh beet until my husband’s stepmother showed me how she cooked them. The secret, she said, was to choose beets that are the same size so that when you cover them with cool water and boil them whole, all of the beets will cook in the same amount of time. And the peels slide right off! Perhaps I am easily impressed but that part seemed like magic.

As my own girls were growing up, we were a small family divided by the beet - two lovers, two haters - so I seldom cooked them, especially when my one fellow lover went off to university and I was sorely outnumbered by the haters. I’ve given up trying to convert the unconvertible so occasionally when my husband is traveling, I’ll make this dish and eat the whole darn thing myself. And this summer, when it was just Mom and I, we enjoyed it together. Divine.

Ingredients
5-6 medium beets (Total weight 1.4lbs or 650g, to give you an idea of size)
1/2 medium purple onion
1/2 cup or 120ml apple cider vinegar
Sea salt
Black pepper
Drizzle olive oil to serve

Note: As recommended, make sure to choose beets that are reasonably the same size so that they will be cooked through at the same time.

Method
Rinse the beets to remove any dirt and then cover them with fresh water in a medium sized pot. Cook over medium heat for 50-60 minutes or until sharp knife slides in easily. Cover with lid and leave to cool.

Drain the water and rinse the beets again. Put on an apron or otherwise protect your clothing from possible beet juice, then gently rub the peels off of the beets.

Rinse the beets again. Dry the beets on some paper towels then slice them a little thicker than 1/4 in or 6mm. Slice the onion as thinly as you can manage.

Lay the beets out in more or less one layer on a deep plate and sprinkle them with sea salt and freshly ground black pepper.

Separate the sliced onion pieces and spread them over the sliced beets. Pour the vinegar over the whole plate and cover with cling film.

The salad can be served in as little as about half an hour. Or store it in refrigerator, covered tightly with cling film until the next day.

Drizzle with a little olive oil before serving, if desired.

Enjoy!

Foodie Extravaganza celebrates obscure food holidays or shares recipes  with the same ingredient or theme each month. This month our host is Camilla from Culinary Adventures with Camilla and we are celebrating National Pickle Day on November 14th early with eight tasty pickle recipes.

We hope you all enjoy our delicious pickled creations this month and come back to see what we bring for you next month.

Posting day is always the first Wednesday of each month. If you are a blogger and would like to join our group and blog along with us, come join our Facebook page Foodie Extravaganza. We would love to have you! If you're a spectator looking for delicious recipes, check out our Foodie Extravaganza Pinterest Board! Looking for our previous parties? Check them out HERE.

The Pickled Posts

• Cuban Sliders by Making Miracles
• Danish Smørrebrød (Open Sandwiches) with Remoulade by Caroline's Cooking
• Dill Pickle Hummus by From Gate to Plate
• Easy Pickled Sweet Peppers by Cherishing a Sweet Life
• Pickled Brussels Sprouts by Our Good Life
• Pickled Peppers by Culinary Adventures with Camilla
• Quick Pickled Beet Salad by Food Lust People Love
• Southern Fried Pickles by The Freshman Cook
• Zupa Orgokowa (Dill Pickle Soup) by A Day in the Life on the Farm

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Beet Cornbread Muffins for #MuffinMonday

Beets give these muffins their distinctive bright color but the corn and cornmeal mellow the beety flavor making these muffins light and delicious. 

When I starting dating my husband more than 30 years ago, he would not eat three things: olives, beets and asparagus. He’s overcome his dislike of olives and asparagus, and actually really likes them both, but I am still working on getting him to eat beets. When I saw this recipe in the free supermarket (Waitrose) recipe booklet, it seemed worth a try. Let me just admit right now that he wasn’t crazy about these muffins. But my friend Glenys and I, beet lovers both, really liked them. I'll just keep on trying.

Ingredients
1 cup plus 3 tablespoons or 200g fine cornmeal or polenta
Generous pinch dried chili flakes or crushed red peppers
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 heaped cup or 195g canned corn, drained
8 2/3 oz or 245g cooked beets (I bought these in a vacuum pack in the supermarket – four small to medium-sized beets)
1/4 cup or 50g butter, melted and cooled
Scant 2/3 cup or 150g thick, Greek-style yogurt
2 large eggs

Method
Preheat your oven to 375°F or 190°C and prepare your 12-cup muffin pan by lining it with paper muffin cups or greasing it.

In a large mixing bowl, combine your cornmeal with dried red pepper, baking powder and salt.

Puree your corn and beets together in a food processor or with a hand blender until relatively smooth. A few corn kernels left here and there are fine.

Add in the eggs, yogurt and melted butter and process or blend again.

Pour the wet ingredients into dry mixture and stir until well combined.

Spoon the batter evenly into the muffin cups.

Bake for about 20 minutes or until a toothpick inserted comes out clean.

These make a great addition to any brunch or luncheon menu.

Enjoy!

Roasted Golden and Purple Beets with Sauteed Greens

I am a lover of purple beets but had never tried golden beets. They remind me of parsnips and I would definitely buy and cook them again. Roasting seems to bring out the best in both colors.

These beets, greens attached, were bought at the farmer's market in Houston called Eastside. I love that place and go whenever I can. I originally posted this recipe along with the roast chicken a couple of weeks back but I decided to give it its own post, in case anyone is looking for a great way to cook beets. Seriously. Try roasting them. And don't waste the greens! They are delicious!

Ingredients
3 purple beets with greens
3 golden beets with greens
2 cloves of garlic
Olive oil
Sea salt
Black pepper

Method
Preheat your oven to 400°F or 200°C and grease a large baking pan with a little olive oil. 

Cut the greens off the beets and trim the stalks, leaving just the leaves. The stalks can be discarded or to the pot when you are making vegetable stock. 

Rinse the leaves several times in a full sink of water until you are sure all the dirt and sand are gone. Scrub the beets and rinse as well. Any dirt will make for a gritty mouthful so you want to clean these suckers longer than you would think necessary to make sure. 

Slice your garlic very thinly. 

 Cut the beets in half and put them in a bowl big enough to allow stirring and/or tossing. I left a little bit of the stalks on, because I think they look pretty.




Drizzle with olive oil, white or dark balsamic vinegar, sea salt and freshly ground black pepper. By stirring or tossing, make sure the beets are completely coated.





Tip the beets onto it your prepared baking pan. Turn them to expose the cut sides and pop them into your preheated oven.





Meanwhile, heat a little olive oil in a skillet and gently fry the sliced garlic with a little olive oil. 

Add the beet greens and let them cook just a few minutes until they wilt. Add a little sea salt and freshly ground black pepper and cook a few minutes more. Spread the greens around on the serving platter and put the garlic slices on top.




After 15 minutes, turn the oven down to 350°F or 180°C and cook the beets until they are fork tender, turning halfway through so that the cut sides face the pan. I ran out of time for the beets because my chicken needed to be on a middle shelf. It was browning much too quickly up higher, with the beets down below, so I ended up taking the beets out after about 45 minutes and putting them back in their mixing/tossing bowl which was glass and microwaving their already well-roasted selves into fork-tenderness. You should cook them the whole time in the oven, if you can! 

Then I arranged them lovingly on the bed of greens. 

Absolutely delicious! A little sweet, a little salty and with the hint of balsamic still showing. This may even win over a non-beet person. 

Enjoy!