Can I eat beet greens? Yes, you can!

Baby beet greens are a common ingredient in field green salads. But have you ever eaten beet greens from mature beet plants? I must admit that until this weekend, I had not! What a shame — all those beet greens that I threw away could have been enjoyed — and from today on they will be!

Fresh beets from the farmer’s market

Beets – 3 veggies in one

How to Cook Beet Greens 

Method #1 – Simple sauted beed greens with Homemade Garlicky Olive Oil and lemon.

1. Cut the stems of the beet greens into bite-size pieces; set aside.
2. Chop the leaves of the beet greens; set aside.
3. Heat a little olive or coconut oil in your pan. Add the beet stems and saute until they start to soften.
4. Then add the chopped beet greens to the pan and saute until they are wilted.
5. Add a few squirts of fresh lemon juice and sprinkle with grated organic lemon peel.
6. Drizzle with Homemade Garlicky Olive Oil just before serving or  let each person add as much of they Garlicky Olive Oil as they wish at the table.

Method #2 – Simple steamed beet greens with  Homemade Garlicky Olive Oil and lemon.

1. Cut the stems of the beet greens into bite-size pieces; set aside.
2. Chop the leaves of the beet greens; set aside.
3. Place the cut stems into the steamer basket of your pot (already filled with water for steaming). Bring the water to a boil and cover the pot. Steam the chopped stems for a minute or so.
4. Add the chopped leaves to the steamer basket (with the stems) and steam for an additional minute or until the leaves have just wilted.
5. Add a few squirts of fresh lemon juice and sprinkle with grated organic lemon peel.
6. Drizzle with Homemade Garlicky Olive Oil just before serving or let each person add as much of they Garlicky Olive Oil as they wish at the table.

How to make steamed beet greens taste great

After steaming the greens, let everyone at the table add Homemade Garlicky Olive Oil to his or her portion.

Food Safety Tip

By the way, not all greens that grow from root veggies are safe to eat. Don’t eat those carrot tops!

Sauteed beet greens with lemon

Enjoy and be healthy!

~Leni

BEETS: Beet Salad

Why beets?

Beets are rich in carotenoids. “…all the bright-colored fruits and vegetables (orange, red, yellow, green) contain vitamin A and lycopene, which have the proven capacity to inhibit the growth of cells of several cancer lines…” (Anti-Cancer by David Servan-Schreiber, page 122).

BEET SALAD

I just finished making Mark Bittman’s recipe, Beet Salad with Garlic-Walnut Sauce, as shown on this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Qnmk7jjOpg ! The Beet Salad looks beautiful! Tastes great! Is easy to make! And is so very healthy! It’s a KEEPER!

Mark uses two very clever cooking techniques in his recipe:

• He shows you an easy way to steam beets in foil, and when they’re cooked you just rub off the skins! Because you will be rubbing off the skins, I don’t think it’s necessary to scrub your beets clean before cooking them…as long as you rinse your beets under running water after they’re cooked (and skinned).
• He shows you how to heat garlic in oil and slightly brown it before using it in the salad dressing. That’s a great idea! It takes the biting edge off the garlic so you can use lots of garlic in a salad dressing – and garlic is very healthy! I plan to use this technique in many more salad dressing recipes!!!

And…I just want to suggest a few variations to Mark’s recipe:

• I used less dressing — about half the amount Mark used per bunch of beets, and I kept the remainder for another salad. It would probably be great on a spinach salad…
• I sprinkled a little “something green” (chopped cilantro) over my beet salad, as he suggested.  I also sprinkled some freshly grated orange rind (fron an organic orange). I used a microplane to grate the orange rind, leaving the bitter white part on the fruit.
• Also, it would be very pretty to put this beet salad on a bed of thinly sliced oranges (rind removed).

Storing your fresh beets

If the beets you bought still have the greens attached to them, cut the greens off close to the beet. That’s because the greens are feeding on the nutrients in your beets, even after the beets have been harvested. (Note: The same is true for carrots with the greens still attached.) By the way, beet greens are edible. They can be cooked just like you would cook collards or kale. And you’ll find beet greens (identified by the red stem) in almost all field green salads.

No time to cook?

Just buy baby beets ready-to-eat (steamed and peeled) from Trader Joe’s (in the refrigerated section near the pre-cut veggies).

P.S. I know beets aren’t exactly the most popular food these days, and you may not have eaten any in years…so let me give you a “heads up” about something. Beets may darken your stool and give a reddish tint to your urine. Nothing to worry about! It’s just beets; that’s all.