WHAT'S FOR DINNER? BEETS ME! FIRST GARDEN HARVEST AND RECIPE
SOME OF YOU ARE BEET HATERS. IS IT BECAUSE THEY STAIN YOUR FINGERS, POSSIBLY YOUR URINE? IS IT BECAUSE THEY TASTE LIKE THE GOODNESS OF THE EARTH? WELL, WHATEVER YOUR REASON, YOU ARE MISSING OUT.
I know a lot of people dislike specific foods. Beets seem to be one of the most widely disliked root vegetables among my circle of people. My family loves them, though. Mostly we enjoy them in as sweet tangy pickled veggie, usually canned. Although I have not successfully gotten the hang of growing enough food to preserve, yet, I was excited to pick my first beets of the year a couple of months ago.
The weather changed fast which kicked in to gear the pest pressure. The wild purple garlic I'd transplanted from the orchard was starting to form scapes. The kale was just starting to make medium sized leaves. I was itching to cook homegrown produce before the heat and bugs beet me to it. Besides, with the heat going into the upper 80s-90s, I wanted to make room for other plants.
I'm a decent cook, unless it's cookies. I suck at making cookies. I can cook a lot of things from scratch, usually without a recipe. I owe this skill to working many years in the food industry and ritualistically watching Cook's Country on PBS. Truthfully, though, I keep things very simple most of the time.
I like the taste of vegetables. Heck, there are times I shovel lettuce in my pie hole without any dressing! Usually I prep ingredients a day or two in advance, cook enough for freezer leftovers, and eat a lot of no cook foods such as carrots with ranch, celery with peanut butter, deli ham with cheddar cheese. I call it toddler food.
The truth is that as much as I love cooking, it's too difficult to do a few times a day, everyday. Sometimes I have a good day where I get to cook an entire meal. As I mentioned already, cooking the first produce from the no dig garden bed was special. It was extra special because I hadn't really cooked in months. Anyway, this was the meal I made with my first pickings from the (supposedly) Spring garden, 2018.
Ingredients:
- cylindra beets
- young kale
- wild purple garlic scapes
- garlic herb organic chicken breasts
- avocado oil
- agave
- balsamic vinegar
- pink Himalayan sea salt
These are the scapes. They are delicious. The entire garlic plant is edible. I removed these scapes because I wanted the plants to keep putting energy into forming the garlic bulbs but also wanted to eat some of the garlic. They are best picked while the entire scape is still pliable. You can still use them once they've grown more, but they become woody. If you wait until they are woody, throw them in stock for flavor, then strain them out.
You probably already know that the entire beet plant is also edible. For those of you who don't like the taste of the beet root, try sautéing the greens. Remove the stem since it has the same strong flavor as the root. You can eat the greens raw in salads, as well. Here I have just rough cut them because as they cook, they shrink. I like cooking to the texture between canned spinach and frozen spinach. Not mushy, but not chewy, either.
This was my first year growing the Cylindra beets I bought from BAKER CREEK HEIRLOOM SEEDS. They are long fat roots which are easier to slice than traditional spherical beets most people are familiar with. I really enjoyed that because the globe shaped beets are annoying to slice. These were pretty on the inside, as well. I'll definitely be growing them again. Probably very soon as it's almost fall garden planting time.
(One more thing about beets. There are many kinds of beets. For those of you who absolutely hate beets, I challenge you to try different varieties. There are sugar beets that are so sweet they are used to make beet sugar. Self explanatory name. There are golden beets in which some varieties have a less earthy flavor than the deep red ones. There are beets which are white with red stripes. There are all kinds of beets and I bet you stopped at the first bite of a deep red globe beet. They are an easy vegetable to grow. They preserve well by canning and freezing, or even just staying in a root cellar for weeks. Possibly months if stored properly. It's a vegetable worth giving another shot since there are so many types and so many benefits)
I'd picked up a nice fresh package of garlic herb marinated organic chicken breast. Truth is organic food is too expensive for me so when I find it on sale, I go for it. The marinated meats aren't usually my first choice. As I said earlier, simple plain food is tasty enough for me. I've found some marinated meats to be too strongly seasoned. To avoid that with this chicken I rinsed the marinade off really well, then dried the pieces, which is what you see in the above picture.
There wasn't much fat so I left it on. Between the avocado oil and the chicken grease, that's all I needed to sauté the greens.
The first thing I started to cook was the beets. I wanted them fork tender which can take a while, just like other root vegetables. I knew by the time these were done, the chicken and greens would be finished. All I did was cover them with water then bring them to a low boil.
They took about 20 minutes to get to the tenderness we like. One thing some people do that I didn't was to drain and replace the water a few times while cooking to get some of that deep pigment a little less strong. I didn't which is probably why I was peeing red for a day. That's okay by me.
If you don't drain it while you cook it you get a very dark red pigment that you could use for a ton of things, such as dying hardboiled eggs or fabric. You can pitch it on the compost pile, too. I haven't tried this but I imagine you could dehydrate the liquid then grind it up for beet powder. It's not uncommon that it's used to color other foods. Why buy red40 when you can grow beets?
Once they were finished, they were moved off the heat, drained, and a little bit of agave and balsamic vinegar was added. The sweetness of the agave mellows out the vinegar a bit. We use agave because it has a low glycemic index. The body still recognizes it as a sugar, but it doesn't create the same glucose roller coaster that refined sugars do. I don't know about you but having wild sugar swings is pretty crappy to experience.
My favorite fat to cook with is Ghee, otherwise known as clarified butter. It's not good for me to have too much animal fats, though, so I primarily use avocado oil now. With a little salt, it tastes very similar to salted butter. I added enough to cover the bottom of my wok, then preheated it before adding the chicken. You want your food to sizzle when you put it in the oil. One way to check to see if the pan is preheated enough is to add a drop of water. You do want to be careful not to over heat the pan unless you enjoy getting a scalding hot shower of oil splatter. Cooking in a wok requires high heat but what I do is preheat the pan on medium before I put the food in, then turn it up to high.
The time it takes to wok stirfry is short. It took maybe 6 minutes to brown the chicken on all sides.
I wait until I can see the part of the meat touching the pan change in color before I start stirring. Basically, I wait until it looks half cooked, or cooked well on one side. That's also when I added the flower tips of the scapes to the wok. They are more delicate than garlic cloves so I didn't want to add them first, like you would normally do cooking with garlic. Think of them like a green onion that tastes like garlic. A stronger garlic flavor than garlic chives. I suppose it wasn't necessary to cook with them since the chicken was already marinated with garlic, but I wanted to cook with them, so they went in. I also didn't salt although with unseasoned meat, this would be the stage that I toss in a pinch of salt.
After the chicken was cooked all the way through, it was removed from the pan to rest while cooking the greens.
After the chicken was removed, the chicken grease and avocado oil were enough liquid to start sautéing the vegetables. You don't need too much liquid, but a little will help cook the greens faster on high heat without burning them.
Because the beet stems require more time to cook they went in first for a few minutes. One of the things that makes a great cook is tasting as you cook. This gives you an idea if something needs more seasoning and is the texture/doneness you want.
After the beet stems were fork tender and taste tested, the greens were thrown in along with a pinch of salt. The salt isn't just for taste. It helps pull out the juices of the leaves which makes sautéing the beet greens, kale, and rest of the garlic scapes go very fast.
I like my stir-fried greens to be cooked well but not cooked so long they are mushy. Greens aren't necessarily the most beautiful looking sides but the pop of red beet stems livens it up.
All that was left to do was plate it up and eat it up. It was a fun meal to prepare and tasted doubly delicious because I grew the veggies.
That's all for now... If you found this post enjoyable, please consider upvoting, resteeming, following, and commenting! Thank you kindly for reading...
ALL IMAGES ARE COPYRIGHT 2018 BY ME, @phedizzle. Hope you enjoyed them!
Here are previous posts of mine:
STORIES:
BAREFOOT IN THE BOONIES: EXPOSING MY ROOTS (introduction post)
BAREFOOT IN THE BOONIES: Chapter 1
BAREFOOT IN THE BOONIES: FAMILY OWNED: Chapter 1 Section 2
BAREFOOT IN THE BOONIES: ABANDONED BASEMENT: Chapter 1 Section 2
BAREFOOT IN THE BOONIES: REWIND: GROWING UP WITH TURNTABLES
2011 GARDEN:
2011: DESIGN AND BUILD
2011 BACKYARD TRELLIS, PERIMETER, & VOLUNTEER
2011 TIRE PORTION OF THE GARDEN
2011 BRASSICAS-TIRE GARDEN
2011 DWARF ORCHARD
RECIPES:
SANTA DELIVERED SHROOMS-SHITAKE OYSTER SCRAMBLE
SWEET CINNAMON POPCORN
MOCK ALMOND JOY--CHEAPER AND HEALTHIER
HANGRY TERIYAKI
RASHES--WHY I SWITCHED TO THIS COMMON DIY LAUNDRY SOAP AND HOW I MAKE IT
SCRAMBLED EGGS WITH FORAGED FINDS: FIRST FOOD FORAGE OF 2018
POEMS:
WATCHING THE SPRING WAKE UP
SHE IS DYING
WEEPING WILLOW
LIGHTS OUT BABY ROBIN
PLANTS AND ANIMALS-EDUCATIONAL:
GRASS IS OUR FRIEND
LITTLE BLUESTEM--BENEFICIAL AND BEAUTIFUL
BEHOLD THE BEAUTY OF THE FALSE INDIGO BUSH
WALK ALONG WITH ME:
WALK ALONG WITH ME 1
WALK ALONG WITH ME 2--WINTER 2017/2018
2018:
WILD TURKEY TAIL AND REISHI MUSHROOMS
HUGELKULTUR BED STARTED BUT THERE IS A LOGISTICAL OBSTACLE.
2018 CURRENT HAPPENINGS: FOOD FOREST EXPANSION
WILD EDIBLES AROUND THE HOMESTEAD
GRANNY SMITH APPLE FINALLY GOT SOME LOVE
PICKED MY FIRST PINT OF WILD NATIVE BLACK RASPBERRIES
TRANSPLANTING WILD PURPLE GARLIC PART 1
ORCHARD: PLANNING, PREPPING, AND PLANTING
CONTESTS/REVIEWS
Chronic and Coffee MSP Review--25 SBD contest for the best MSPWAVES Radio Reviews
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I love beets. they are one of my favorite to juice (greens and all)
What do you juice with the beets? I've never actually tried juicing. Using a juicer seems like a chore having to clean it immediately. I have put the beet juice in a jar of refrigerator pickled hardboiled eggs and another jar of baby corn and icicle radish.
anything :) but the ABC (Apple, Beet, Carrot) juice is a very basic juice and is the foundation for a lot of great juices (1:4:4 ratio). I like to add some ginger. The auger type juicer is pretty easy to clean(that's what we have). the spinning shredder basket type are a PITA.
I envy you. I want to grow my own vegetables too. Do you have any tips to give me about picking soil suitable for planting? I'm from a country about to completely unban pesticides so I worry a lot about getting cancer.
I am not an expert but I do spend a lot of time watching videos on YouTube to learn tips and tricks. I also took an online course that gave a good overview of permaculture which taught me a lot the foundation of growing. permaculture is a system of growing which is intended to mimic how nature grows. There are many other types of growing that are good methods, too. It just depends on your goals.
The most important thing to consider is what's inside the soil. What I mean by that is feeding the microorganisms in the soil. The microscopic bugs, bacteria, and fungus, as well as the regular bugs you see. For example the worms. So when you grow healthy plants, it's because what's in the soil provides the nutrients the plants need. Yes, each plant needs a certain amount of nutrients like nitrogen, potassium, phosphorus and such, but the foundation of soil really should encourage and feed the microbiology living in the soil.
I'm not experienced enough yet to understand the nuances of certain plants. What I do know is the compost we make always has the healthiest plants growing every year from volunteer seeds of vegetables we put in the compost. Our compost is really neglected. We basically throw everything in a pile, leave it for a couple of years without turning it. This is called cold composting. The compost you hear people talk the most about where they turn the pile to aerate it really just speeds up the process so it's usable faster.
Anyway...Because we have mostly clay soil and are not creating enough compost yet, we have had to start grow areas by adding components to make good healthy soil. We do not till the ground because that kills the microorganisms. What I do is lay down a weed barrier such as cardboard (you could also lay down a really thick layer of compost so that it smothers the light from anything growing below). The area we are growing in right now was what's called a lasagna method. As you can probably guess, that's where you layer different soil components. We layered cardboard, straw and recyclable paper, kitchen scraps, compost, straw, worm castings (worm poop), rock dust (this has minerals), blood meal, bone meal, coconut coir, food scraps, compost, then a thick layer of straw. We do this in the fall so that by the time spring rolls around, those things are composted down and ready to plant. That's worked well so far. Really the main problems we have here dealing with the bugs, heat and humidity. The plants thrive in our soil.
Sorry for the really long reply lol. Hope it's helpful.
Extremely helpful. I bought you a vote for this. Thank you.
Beet root is beneficial for over all body specially for gaining blood
Yes beets are very healthy. I forget exactly what all is in beets that makes them so healthy. Do you mean they are good for people who are anemic? In general foods with deep dark pigment are packed full of nutrients and when we grow them ourselves we can make sure they aren't fed toxins.
Recipe is very good for health its source of energy
That actually looks really good!
It was tasty. I forgot to mention that I spooned some of the sweet vinegar juice from the beets onto the greens after dishing it up. I like my greens with a little tang. Those cylindra beets are lovely. Didn't you say you grow them too? I wish there were a yellow variety. If I knew how to make my own hybrid plants with cross pollinated seeds I would try it. I love the ease of preparing the long beet roots but wouldn't it be cool to have one that's striped or yellow? Maybe there are already some. I should look one day. I just have soooooooo many seeds as it is. If I keep buying seeds it would really be a waste since I don't have much area prepped to plant everything.
I love beets and this sounds like it was just plain delicious! Not to mention it LOOKS gorgeous. :))
Thank you! Do you grow and cook beets other than pickling? That seems to be the most common way I see people eat them. Or as @mattlovell said, juicing. One day I might get a little more creative. lol.
Yes, I freeze them or eat them fresh. I am the only one who likes them, so haven't gotten too creative.
THOSE beets look like perfection!
I was never fond of beets in my younger years, but now I LOVE them!
Everything looks so good!! Love the beets to make a
Russian salad called vinegrette ..also pickles, sour cabbage, and peas. So good :)
I'd love to see a recipe. Have you posted one for the Russian salad? TBH, I have no idea what foods or dishes Russians eat. I wish my garden was more productive. I got a total of about 12 beet roots. I'm hoping to redeem myself with a fall garden. lol. Do you have a garden?
Thanks for sharing that nice information about beet root, appreciate that.
Your welcome. =P do you like to eat beets?
Congratulations! This excellent post was chosen by the new curation initiative of the @postpromoter content promotion service to receive a free upvote!
This post exemplifies the type of great content that we at @postpromoter enjoy reading and would love to see more of on the Steem platform. Keep up the good work!
this is a great thing you're doing, recognizing great content and putting your money where you mouth is, no pun intended ...beets in your mouth :)))
Thank you for the curation! It was unexpected. Gave me a big smile and warm fuzzies.
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