my other favorite way to enjoy beets
The essential raw ingredients for making Phat Beets.
Over the years, Phat Beets have been one of our most consistently popular pickled items. They have a great balance of sweet and savory, they have a festive color, and they are extremely versatile. Our signature hors d’oeuvre is the Phat Beet Happy Appy, which is a year-round winner made by spreading soft goat cheese on a crostini, laying a slice of Phat Beet on top, and then crowning the creation with blueberries when available. We particularly like it at our annual 4th of July party in Vermont, where its red, white and blue aspect makes it highly thematic.
The Phat Beet Happy Appy.
But my relationship with beets runs much deeper than Phat Beets. I was obsessed with soups long before I became a pickle guy, and one of my all-time favorites is borscht. The best recipe for borscht I know comes from James Peterson’s cookbook Splendid Soups, and my copy has more than its fair share of beet stains and others as well. The recipe is at home, so I will add it later to this post, but the thing I wanted to discuss is how to handle the beets initially. If you rub them with olive oil, and the wrap them with some fresh rosemary in aluminum foil and roast them in a 400-degree oven, they will bring a sublime roasty flavor to the final soup.
Beets prepped for roasting, to be used to sublime effect for borscht.
The recipe in the Peterson cookbook is quite long, and I found a version of it on the web that you can see here. My modifications were to reduce the amount of brisket used to one-third (it is still plenty) and to eliminate the pork shoulder (the flavor is largely masked by everything else going on). It is a hearty delight, superb with a dollop of sour cream and some sprinkles of fresh dill. If you are having a crowd over for the Super Bowl, it is a great one-pot offering.
