Perfect Roasted Beets

I love the convenience of vacuum-sealed, cooked beets that I can buy in the store in mass quantities and use as I please for a quick side dish or in a beautiful, deep magenta smoothie. But every now and then I simply cannot pass up a bunch of gorgeous, fresh beets, complete with long, pink stalks and deep green leaves. It’s double the bang for my buck since I can use the greens and stalks in smoothies.

Beets are full of naturally-occurring plant nitrates, which goes through a couple of conversions in the body to form nitric oxide, a powerful neurotransmitter that regulates the heart beat, blood flow, and can reduce blood pressure. Random fact from my days working in cardiac therapy: every heart patient is prescribed a nitrate pill (nitroglycerin) to use as needed for chest pain. So, isn’t it cool (and if you really ponder it, mindblowing!) that nature gives us built-in chemicals and nutrients to keep our bodies running at tip-top? Plus, isn’t it neat that beets LOOK like a heart, complete with the stems on top resembling the aorta?

In ayurveda, eating root vegetables is a practice to ground oneself, bringing our vata or pitta back into balance.

For this recipe, I’ve found I needn’t use any oil, as long as the cooking vessel is fully sealed. I roast my beets in a large dutch oven, let them cool, and then use a paper towel to rub off the skin. Simply store in the fridge and use as desired. Be sure to read the notes below for helpful tips to keep the flavor sweet and mild.

Ingredients

Raw beets, scrubbed clean

Instructions:

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Line a dutch oven or another lidded cooking dish with parchment paper. After cleaning the beets, cut off the stalks leaving about one inch to prevent the beet from bleeding. Place in the dutch oven, cover, and bake. For small beets (2-3 inch diameter) set the timer for 35 minutes. For medium beets (3-4 inch diameter) it will take 35-45 minutes. For large beets (4+ diameter) it will take 45-60 minutes.**

To check the beets, use a toothpick and insert in the thickest part of each beet. They are done when the toothpick can insert all the way to the center without a lot of resistance.*** Different sized beets will have varying cooking times, so you may remove smaller ones and let larger ones continue roasting. Remove them to a clean bowl or cooling rack. Cool completely.

Once cooled, use a paper towel to rub the out skin off. Store in the fridge up to 5 days.

Notes:

*If you do not have parchment paper on hand, simply rub the beets with a high-heat, flavorless cooking oil to prevent sticking and burning, such as avocado oil or grapeseed oil.

**You can cut larger beets in half to reduce cooking time. Roast skin side down, cut side up. Check at 35 minutes in the thickest part of the beet.

***The trick to having perfectly roasted, sweet beets is to make sure you do not over roast them. Over roasting the beets will burn the natural sugars within, resulting in a bitter-tasting beet. It’s better to slightly under roast a beet and keep it crisper and sweeter than to have a bitter beet.