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SEASONAL RECIPES

Nicola Galloway shares her favourite ways to eat and preserve this versatile root crop that’s easy to grow in your own backyard. Beetroot is wonderfully versatile. It can be eaten raw, cooked, used in savoury meals and even sweet recipes benefit from its

PHOTOS: NICOLA GALLOWAY • PORTRAIT: DANIEL ALLEN

- Beetroot.

The whole plant can be eaten, making beetroot the ultimate root-to-tip garden vegetable for the cost-conscious. Besides the depth of winter when frosts and low sun hours slow growth, beetroot is a regular in my kitchen. Some favourite modes of preparation include pickled beetroot slices for sandwiches; grated raw into salads; and baked whole to use in both sweet and savoury recipes. It is rare not to find beetroot in some form in my fridge throughout the year.

Beetroot can be grown in most gardens year round, although growth will be slow over winter in southern gardens.

To grow to a decent size, they need time (three to four months in the ground), but they can quite happily be interplanted with other veges, including spring onions and lettuce that will be harvested earlier providing space for the growing beetroot.

Like carrots, they don’t like their roots disturbed so are best direct sown into the garden, or planted as plug tray seedlings.

I am a fan of the longer ‘Cylindra’ beetroot for pickling to result in more evenly shaped slices in the jars. I also enjoy growing golden or dark red ‘Detroit’ for baby beets, and candy-striped ‘Chioggia’ for something different, even though the vibrant colour is lost when ‘Chioggia’ is cooked so these are best thinly sliced into a salad to make the most of their beautiful concentric rings.

And don’t forget beetroot leaves. They can be cooked as you would spinach or silverbeet, sauteed, or added to a filo pie with feta. Simply finely chop the stalks, roughly chop the leaves and cook with a splash of water and drizzle of oil until wilted.

There are so many ways to enjoy this all-round root vegetable, it more than deserves a spot in every Kiwi vege garden.

The amount of sugar added to the pickling liquid will depend on the sweetness of the beetroot (this can vary through the year) and is best added to taste. This recipe can be scaled up if you have a lot of beetroot from the garden to process.

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2022-05-01T07:00:00.0000000Z

2022-05-01T07:00:00.0000000Z

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