How to cook beets

How to cook beets

Beetroot is a unique vegetable, without which it is impossible to imagine Slavic cuisine. It is a part of many favorite dishes - such as borsch, vinaigrette, beetroot soup, herring under a fur coat and various salads. Therefore, many are interested in how to properly, and most importantly, quickly cook beets, and it would be good to save all the vitamins with which this vegetable is so rich.

How to choose the beets for cooking

In order to get a tasty and healthy dish of beets, you need to choose young root vegetables: they are softer and tastier. The selected root crop should be of medium size, dense, with a thin skin of dark red color, without traces of damage and rot.

Strongly large root crops are set aside - perhaps this is not at all red beet, but fodder.

In principle, food varieties can also be eaten, but in addition to being not so sweet, the chemical composition of the fertilizers used to grow the plants is a little alarming. It must be remembered that the composition of fertilizers for food and feed crops is different, so it is better not to risk it.

The best is considered to be the Bordeaux variety - small flattened roots of bright burgundy color with thin skin.

If you have the opportunity to buy beets from the tops of, this is just great. Greens will show you the freshness of the root, in addition, the tops in themselves are very useful and from it you can cook some very tasty dishes.

How to cook beets

This question does not interest only amateurs in cooking - after all, it must be cooked so that it retains the maximum of useful substances. There are several ways to cook beets quickly and tasty.

1 way

This recipe will take a lot of time, but it will allow you to save all the vitamins that beets are so rich with.

Root crop is completely poured with cold water and put on the stove, exposing the maximum temperature. After boiling, the temperature is lowered, and the beets are cooked over moderate heat for another 2-3 hours - depending on the size.

2 way

The cooking process can be reduced to one hour, if you pour boiling water on beets. For the water temperature to be even higher, you need to add three to four spoons of vegetable oil.

3 way

This method is used by professional chefs. Beets are boiled at the maximum temperature with the addition of vegetable oil to the water for about 20-30 minutes, depending on the size, then removed from the stove and poured with cold water for another 10 minutes. Sharp temperature differential will bring the root to full readiness. The only negative - with such processing, vitamin C is completely destroyed.

4 way

This method can not be called fast, but it will turn out very tasty. Beets are wrapped in baking paper and put in the microwave for 25-30 minutes. You can wrap the vegetable in foil and bake it in the oven at a temperature of 200 degrees. But vitamin C with this method, unfortunately, also does not survive - it collapses already at 190 degrees.

Baked beets always turn out to be sweeter than boiled, so a similar method is good if the vegetable is used later to make salads.

Secrets of cooking beets

  • The cooking process should always be finished with cold water - it will be easier to peel it.
  • When cooking beets, it is better not to pickle - it will be tough and less juicy. Salt also increases cooking time. Moreover, a sweet root vegetable does not need salt.
  • It is not recommended to clean the beets before cooking - it will lose its rich color. It is better to just wash it thoroughly, and clean it just before laying the boiled beets in a cooked dish.
  • In order for the vegetable to retain its rich color, 1 teaspoon of vinegar or lemon juice is added to the boiling water. This must be done if you still peeled the beets before cooking.
  • Not everyone likes the smell of boiling beets. A crust of bread thrown into boiling water will help neutralize it.
  • Beet readiness is checked with a fork or a wooden toothpick - it should freely enter the root vegetable. But it is not necessary to check the readiness constantly: beetroot pierced in many places will turn out less juicy.
  • If you are going to prepare a vinaigrette, then in order for the beets not to color the rest of the ingredients, before adding to the salad the cut pieces of beets are sprinkled with vegetable oil.
  • Peeled beets cannot be kept in the air for a long time in order not to destroy vitamin C.
  • Beet broth, remaining after cooking beets, is an excellent laxative and diuretic. You can add a little lemon juice, cinnamon and ginger to the decoction and get a vitamin tonic drink that tastes like kvass.
  • The beet botwe contains a shock dose of vitamins, much larger than in the root crop itself. Add tops to borscht, beetroot and other dishes, recipes that can easily be found on the Internet. But only young beet tops can go into food - the old one is as tasteless as it is useless.
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