For no good reason I bought a great big bag of grown in BC beets. So what do you do with a great big bag of beets? Well, if you are like me, you run an experiment.
Rather than having them boil and splatter the top of my stove and make a grand old mess I decided to bake them.
The first step, before putting them in the oven is to wash each beet really carefully.
After the wash cycle, I lay them in a baking dish and drizzled olive oil over them and then into a 400 degree oven they went.
Now here’s a little reality check for you – don’t start this process unless you have a couple of hours. I read online that baked beets take 50-60 minute bake beets.
In your dreams.
I had the baked beets, well more accurately, baking beets in the oven, uncovered for 45 minutes and they were still rock hard like my biceps.
I covered them with foil and left them for another 20 minutes. Still hard. So I added about a quarter cup of water and sealed under the tin foil.
Another 20 minutes and I was able to pierce them with a fork.
By this time it was late so I took them out of the oven, loaded them into a plastic container and then into the fridge for an overnight stay.
This morning I pulled out six of them and peeled them by scraping them with the dull side of a knife blade.
I then drizzled them with olive oil, a splash of apple cider vinegar and a shake of sea salt.
They tasted good but something was missing. So I put them back in the baking dish and put them under the broiler in our oven for 5 minutes. That brought the flavour of the beets right to the front of my tongue!
Delicious.