When your friend loves you, she brings beets

My college friend Tina is staying with me this week and because she’s nutty like I am, she brought a suitcase full of fresh beets to me from her father’s farmette in her hometown of Seattle. 

I love beets. My daughter loves beets and she isn’t exactly a big foodie. But so many people dislike beets. It makes me feel fortunate that my mother never inflicted canned beets or other flavorless, vapid variations on me. I came to adulthood ready to accept the delights of a well-cooked beet.

First of all, of course, like all richly hued vegetables, beets are really good for you. Both the roots and the leaves have a lot of vitamin C and potassium and contain something called betalains that are purifying and can detoxify your liver and other essential organs. 

Beets have a lot of riboflavin, which is also known as vitamin B, which boosts your red blood cells and helps you access the energy stored in carbohydrates.

Tina is specifically bringing golden or yellow beets with her. While the paler version of a fruit or vegetable is often less packed with nutrition than the darker versions, this does not hold true for yellow beets, which apparently have more lutein (very good for your eyes) than do their red counterparts. 

According to the WH foods website at www.whfoods.com, the health-generating betalains do not particularly like heat. The longer they are exposed to heat, the weaker they get. This is unfortunate as beets are substantially less pleasant when they are hard and undercooked than when they are wonderfully roasted until they are sweet and tender and have a slight sugary glaze on them.

Boiling is always the worst way to prepare vegetables, because the nutrients drift out into the cooking water and get poured down your drain. Roasting is better.

When it comes to betalains, neither is very good, unfortunately. 

But as with all fresh foods, it’s not the same as popping a vitamin pill. Even if your beets are not giving you full-strength betalains (and vitamin C, which also doesn’t love to be cooked), they are still giving you other healthful things, not the least of which is fiber.

If you choose to roast your beets until they are tender and sweet, here is how Tina (who is an exceptionally good cook) prepares them. 

“I just roast them in the oven. Put a little water on the bottom of the pan, cover tightly.  I can’t say how long or what temperature, it varies. I tend to roast all my veggies at least at 400 degrees, most often 425,” she said.

If they are fresh, fresh, fresh out of the garden, then it’s possible to boil them because they will cook in under an hour and all the flavor won’t leech out. But if they’re at all tired, go for the roasting technique instead.

Tina is not dogmatic about how to serve them. “First I peel them, then I either slice or cube them. I add salt, olive oil, sometimes a dash of vinegar (if I’m serving them at room temperature). 

“Sometimes I add red onion, sometimes garlic — but I always use pieces that are big enough to pick out. I put them in to add flavor but I pick them out when I’m eating and leave them on the side of my plate.” 

She also flavors her beets with “a mélange of fresh herbs: mint, oregano, parsley, basil, whatever I have around. Mint and parsley are my favorites. Dried oregano works well also.”

If you really, really want every little drop of nutrition from those beets, then try serving them in the French style, grated and raw. Mark Bittman, author of “How to Cook Everything,” has a recipe online in which he has you peel the beets over your sink (because it’s messy). Put the peeled beets in  your food processor and shred them but don’t let them turn into a puree. I would imagine that this works better if you have the shredding disc for your machine. You can  also of course shred them with a grater (watch your fingers). Then dress them with a simple vinaigrette.