What the experts say...
Beetroot is a remarkable, healthy and delicious vegetable that is fast becoming ubiquitous at the nation’s most fashionable dinner tables – the days when it was simply picked and served from a jar with salad cream have long since disappeared. It’s healthy, versatile and delicious – and finally gaining the popularity it deserves.
Mark Hix
A fantastic veg which is great served with white fish such as grilled monkfish, or with beef carpaccio, or as part of an antipasti plate along with some tasty beans, sliced prosciutto and tomato-rubbed crostini. If you’re lucky enough to buy beetroots with their leaves, remove them, keep them and use them like spinach – they taste amazing.
Jamie Oliver – The Return of the Naked Chef
In spring, it is said, a young man’s fancy turns to love. In autumn, the chef’s fancy (whether young or not) turns to the fantastic seasonal produce on offer: root vegetables, game, orchard fruits, truffles, mushrooms. And beetroot. Beetroot is one of those vegetables, such as cauliflower, that many people find unattractive and uninspiring and it usually ends up either boiled into some form of borscht or sliced into a salad, where it soon taints everything pink, as if in reproach at the cook’s lack of imagination. Because beetroot can be a very exciting ingredient. I prize its vibrant red-purple hue (though it comes in a variety of colours) and its sweetness and extraordinary earthiness.
Heston Blumenthal
Although it is simplicity personified, beetroot soup always screams of effort. Maybe it's the colour, or the rich ruby earthiness of it. To me, it's Norway in a bowl.
Sophie Dahl
Beetroot is either loved or hated – mostly the latter I suspect, because in this country people have a surfeit of it doused in strong vinegar. But its lovers know of its earthy charm and delicious but distinctive flavour.
Delia Smith
When most people think about beetroot, they think of big vinegary crinkle-cut chunks from a jar and immediately say no! But remember, beetroots are only vinegary when they’re pickled. When simply boiled or roasted they are juicy and sweet as you like. Raw beetroot is amazing in salads, giving you a deep, earthy, minerally flavour, lots of crunch and, of course, incredible colours.
Jamie Oliver
I’m someone who flinched at that flabby, putrid and jelly fleshed beetroot at school. Many things redeem beetroot: in the first instance roasting it in foil in a hot oven which gives it a wonderful, rounded nuttiness.
Nigella Lawson
I don't understand why I spent my entire childhood pushing beetroot round my plate as if it was deadly nightshade. It's red, it's sweet, what's for a child not to like? The life-changing moment was when I made a dish of sliced beetroot in cream to go with slices of bloody, melting roasted rib of beef. The deeply savoury, crusty bits around the beef and the warm, sweet cream was love at first forkful.
Nigel Slater
Beetroot is sadly misunderstood and, when cooked from fresh, it can be amazing. This honey-sweet crimson beauty makes amazing iron-rich salads and soups.
Valentine Warner
Author, food writer and Sunday Telegraph columnist Diana Henry on the virtues of beetroot:
“Beetroot, sadly, insinuates itself into the culinary life of most Brits in an unpromising way, usually as pickled globes bleeding over hardboiled egg in an old-fashioned English salad. But we don’t know what we’re missing. You have to go north to develop beetroot love. And I don’t mean Yorkshire. I mean Scandinavia, or east, to Russia, or even over the big pond to the States. The Scandinavians love it. There it is served as a side vegetable as often as carrots are here. Think of eating on the terrace of one of those cute Swedish wooden houses, the sun reluctant to set, with poached salmon on the table, boiled potatoes glossy with butter and flecked with dill and a big platter of cooked beetroot, waiting to be daubed with sour cream. As you cut into the beetroot its beautiful rings are revealed and as you eat it, its sweetness is perfect with the cream, dill and fish.
Americans are fans too. “Who needs a recipe for another beet salad?” I read in an American food blog recently. They do have their fill. They eat beets dressed with a creamy curry flavoured dressing, or one of walnut oil; they partner it with segments of orange and tangles of watercress, or toss it with chunks of blue cheese and apples, or bowls of lentils topped with toasted hazelnuts.
I haven’t eaten the pickled version since childhood, but cooked beetroot has a regular place on my table. Ready cooked, you don’t even have the hassle of boiling or roasting it yourself, but can still serve it hot it by sautéing it in butter or a light flavoured olive oil. All you need to do is dry the globes with paper towels when you remove them from the packet.
Beetroot has a delicate but sweet flavour and it loves strong or salty partners: capers, goat’s cheese, smoked fish, sour cream, fennel, dill, game and beef are all wonderful with it. It also looks amazing. Crimson, vermillion, call it what you will, there is nothing like beetroot to make a bold visual statement. Think beetroot only has its place on a tired salad? There is so much more you can do with it than leave it to weep over a hard boiled egg. Get with it. Eat your beets.”
