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Beets

They have an ancient pedigree, but beets were still a curiosity in 16th century English kitchens.

[ modern varieties | culture | recipes ]

Beets go way back

The beet stretches its colorful roots far back into human history, to a wild leafy plant growing in the coastal regions of Europe, North Africa and Asia Minor. This ancestor of the plant we grow in our gardens today was a slender-rooted perennial -- Beta maritima, or sea-beet. During the course of the beet's domestication, the plant was given its formal name for some imagined resemblance of the swollen root to the Greek letter B (beta). Other sources point to the Celtic "bett", meaning red, as the origin of the name.

The first stage of domestication in the life of Beta maritima came with the Greeks and Romans, who grew and used the foliage for boiling as a pot herb. >From this cultivation and use developed the various chards, known as silver beet or white beet, spinach beet, perpetual spinach, and rhubarb beet -- a form with ruby stalks and leaf ribbing. These would originally have been selected strains of Beta maritima found mainly in southern Italy and Sicily, which accounts for the name of this group, Beta cicla. They are popular today as spinach substitutes.

Our gardening ancestors did not regard the roots of the beet with the same high esteem as we do today. These "crimson nether parts" were first relegated to the domain of medicine and used in such things as salves until the Romans developed the beetroot, Beta vulgaris, from selections of Beta maritima and began to distribute it throughout Europe during the second and third centuries A.D. Known as Roman beet, the roots were still held as something of a curious novelty in 16th century English kitchens where they were roasted, boiled for use in salads, baked, and candied.

Older varieties of beets

As Beta vulgaris became increasingly known and valued for its many uses, there came a natural separation of types. While the greens maintained their steadfast role as fresh salad material and a cooked vegetable, roots that remained naturally small and refined were reserved for the table while coarser, larger sorts were fed to livestock. During the eighteenth century these early fodder beets were developed into strains of highly productive forage plants known as mangel wurzels.

But mangels are apparently not limited to this one use. J.L. Hudson, a California seedsman dedicated to the preservation of genetic seed resources, lists the mangel wurzel Mammoth Long Red and describes it as "A type of beet usually grown for stock and poultry feed, but used as a delicious table vegetable when young and tender. Cooked, the texture is that of tender beets, but the flavor is more potato-like, with a delightful touch of sweetness. If you find ordinary beets too strong, try this kind."

Developed also in the eighteenth century from early fodder beets was the sugar beet, Beta vulgaris saccharifera, which yields 20 per cent sucrose by weight. These roots too may be eaten as regular beets while they are young.

During the nineteenth century beet roots for the table offered a pleasing diversity. There were rounded varieties such as Early Blood Turnip, elongated roots on varieties such as Long Blood Red, and non-red types such as Yellow Turnip beet. The percursor of the old standard Detroit was already on the scene, as was Egyptian, a variety still available today.
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Modern beet varieties

The numbers of beet varieties available today are not exactly staggering, especially when compared to the lengthy listings of such vegetables as cabbages, lettuces, or carrots in many catalogues. Still, the beet's range in shape, size and color is steadily building.

Beets come in two basic styles: globe-shaped, and cylindrical. For intensively planted vegetable plots the long carrot-shaped roots of such varieties as Cylindra, Formanova and Forona bring a space-saving advantage. Their shape also makes them fast-cooking, and easy to peel and prepare in uniform slices.

More commonly grown are the standard globe-shaped types such as Detroit Dark Red and Ruby Queen. Most beets are open-pollinated, but among the globe-shaped ones there are now on the market several hybrid varieties such as Pacemaker III and Red Ace. While all beets may be used at the tiny stage, varieties bred to round out early and stay small and tender are billed as baby beets. Examples of these are Little Ball and Kestrel, a hybrid. For late fall and winter-long use, Winterkeeper or Lutz Greenleaf are excellent. Sown in early July, the roots store easily in the ground for harvesting during the winter.

Beets are available beyond the familiar red too. Golden-orange skins and bright gold flesh set Burpee's Golden beet apart, and there are strains of white beet called Albino Vereduna or Albino White. Both white and golden beets are mild in flavor, with plain green tops.
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Beet culture

Almost all beets are multi-germ, meaning that each seed is not a single seed but a fruit containing several seeds. Every "seed" sown produces not one plant but a clump of several. This generous abundance seems wonderful, the bad news coming with the extra thinning that multi-germination demands. Some beets have been bred as single-seeded, or monogerm varieties.

Beets can represent either the best of times or the worst of times in the home garden. Some gardens routinely grow perfectly beautiful, luscious beets with the utmost of ease, while in others growing this vegetable at all appears to be a distressingly elusive goal. I suspect that the answer to this puzzle lies in the beet's demand for a specific set of growing conditions, and its sensitivity to nutrient and trace mineral deficiencies.

Beets require an open, sunny site with a moist but well-drained soil close to neutral on the alkaline-acidity scale. A pH between 6.5 and 6.8 is ideal. A plump-textured, moisture-retentive soil well supplied with a complete range of trace minerals is best provided by adding to the planting site some bulky organic materials such as compost, green manures, and seaweed. Beets will do well in a plot of ground that grew good cabbages the year before, because fine cabbages indicate a fertile, non-acid soil.

Seaweed dug into the beet site during the winter is an ideal soil conditioner for this maritime vegetable. Seaweeds enrich the ground mainly with potassium, a nutrient especially important to beets, along with small amounts of nitrogen and phosphorus and a multitude of trace minerals. An alternative is to mix dried seaweed meal, available at some garden centres and farm supply outlets, into the soil.

This vegetable lends itself admirably to planting in space-efficient multiple rows, with the plants spaced to form a cooling, weed-inhibiting, moisture-conserving canopy over the soil. A bed 32 inches (80 cm) wide, for example, would accommodate four rows of beets spaced eight inches (20 cm) apart with a four-inch (10-cm) margin left along each side.

Sow the seeds one-half inch (12 mm) deep and one inch (2.5 cm) apart, and begin to thin the plants when they are around three inches (7.5 cm) high. Continue to thin by degrees as you gather beets and the greens for the table.

Keep the soil consistently dampened, and water the rows after thinnings with liquid fish and seaweed mixed together, using half the label rates of each. Beets will be at their most tasty and tender at two to three inches (five to 7.5 cm) in diameter. Remove the leaves by twisting or cutting the stems leaving two inches (five cm) of stem above the root crow to reduce bleeding and loss of interior juice from the roots.
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Using beets

As a dual-purpose vegetable, the beet delivers double value for the effort and space we give to its culture in our gardens. Both greens and roots bring bright color and vivid flavors to meals. Fresh, tender, vitamin-rich beet greens are a treat I very much look forward to. I especially like the extra mildness in the greens of Burpee's Golden beet, and the autumn yields of Winterkeeper's all-green leaves, which are huge, shiny and supersweet.

I'll often do a whole Dutch oven full of greens like this, use some for a meal and freeze the rest. Preparing extras of all vegetables at a meal is a handy technique for avoiding the Cinderella syndrome of being chained to the stove throughout the growing season, slave to preserving summer.

My favorite way of preparing beet greens for the table is quick, simple, and delicious. Put one tablespoon oil and one or two minced or pressed garlic cloves in the bottom of a heavy pot that has a lid. Add beet greens that have been washed, drained briefly and chopped. For highly seasoned greens, dust each layer with seasoning salt or your favorite seasoning blend as you place the greens in the pot. Put the lid on the pot and cook the greens over medium heat until they are thoroughly wilted and tender. Serve with a little of the vitamin-rich juice and a pat of butter.

A dish of steamed whole baby beets is a classic vegetable for serving simply glazed with a dash of butter, or dressed with a sweet-sour Harvard beet sauce. Sometimes I substitute lemon or orange juice along with the grated rind for the vinegar in Harvard beet sauce. The citrus flavor is delightful with beets. Cylindrical beets are naturals for serving in thin, uniform slices. I'll often pass these beets, cooked, through the waffler blade of my hand-powered slicer.

BORSCHT

For many years a family favorite has been a good old-fashioned garden vegetable borscht, a recipe given to me long ago by a gardening friend. I make it in a huge soup kettle and freeze it for bringing summer into winter meals.

There are no measurements. Making this soup is a simple matter of tossing fresh vegetables into the pot in your own chosen proportions. It's always delicious.

Here are the vegetables that I use in this borscht:
    - raw beets peeled and diced small
   - beet tops washed and chopped
   - carrots scrubbed and diced
   - chopped cabbage
   - peas
   - broad beans
   - minced green dill
   - chopped onions and tops
   - minced garlic (optional)

Place the fresh vegetables in a pot and add water to just below their level. Bring to a boil, add two handfuls of oatmeal and vinegar, salt and pepper to taste, and continue the cooking.

For freezing, leave the vegetables slightly undercooked.

To serve, thaw and add diced potatoes. When the potatoes are tender, thicken the soup a little with a mixture of flour and cream. Add a pat of butter just before serving.

To cook beets, I steam them with the skins on, root tails intact and two inches (five cm) of stem end left attached. When the beets are steamed tender, I slip the skins away quickly under cold water. Leftover cold beets are nice in salads plain, or marinated in a bit of salad dressing or in a partly empty jar of pickles.

Beets and onions are a personal favorite combination. When pickling beets I do some of the jars with alternating layers of beet and onion slices, with several cloves in each jar for spicing. The onion slices turn a gorgeous shade of pink.

My affection for the union of onion and beets extends to everyday preparation of cooked beets for the table. Here's a recipe from a good friend who maintains with her husband a huge garden filled with her family's favorite vegetables. I call them Andrea's Beets. Cook and slip the skins from six medium beets. Cut them in thin slices and mix in one finely minced small onion one tablespoon butter. Set in a low oven for a few minutes before serving.

And from a cook book Andrea brought with her as a young bride from Holland, here's Dutch Beets, a recipe I've found to be quite delectable. Combine and simmer until thickened three-quarters cup of water, two tablespoons corn starch, two whole cloves, one teaspoon sugar, one tablespoon vinegar, one tablespoon butter and one finely chopped onion. Add salt and pepper to taste, remove cloves and pour the sauce over six medium beets, cooked and sliced thin.
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