Beets

Vegetables

Beets.

Sweet earth captured in burgundy orbs that stain fingers and satisfy souls

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Beets recipes

7 recipes featuring Beets from our community of creators.

Beet Salad for Haters

by Leanne Valenti

Peaches, Beets & Goat Cheese on Sourdough Toast

by Katie Jarrott

Roasted Beet & Apple Salad with Balsamic Glaze

by Katie Jarrott

Beet and Radish Salad with Pistachios, Smoked Trout & Creamy Dill Vinaigrette

by Elizabeth Winslow

Vampiro (Beet & Citrus Juice)

by B loza

Root Cellar Gratin with Whipped Goat Cheese & Blistered Pepper Vinaigrette

by Sonya Cote

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Before You Cook

Storage, prep & technique

Essential tips for handling Beets.

Prevent Staining

Rub hands with coarse salt and lemon juice before handling raw beets to minimize staining. Wear gloves when grating or julienning. Stainless steel removes beet stains from hands better than soap alone.

Roast Whole

Leave skin on and wrap in foil with a splash of water for even cooking. Roast at 400°F until tender when pierced—usually 45-60 minutes depending on size. Skins slip off easily when hot.

Grate Raw

Young, tender beets grate beautifully raw for salads and slaws. Use the large holes of a box grater and dress immediately with acid to prevent oxidation. Raw beets pair excellently with sharp cheeses and bitter greens.

Store Properly

Remove greens immediately to prevent moisture loss from roots. Store unwashed beets in perforated plastic bags in the refrigerator for up to three weeks. Don't wash until ready to use.

Use the Greens

Treat beet greens like chard or spinach—sauté with garlic and olive oil, or add young leaves raw to salads. They're especially good wilted into warm grain salads or pasta dishes.

Balance Sweetness

Beets' natural sugars pair beautifully with sharp acids like vinegar, citrus, or pickled elements. A splash of acid brightens their earthy flavor and prevents dishes from tasting flat or overly sweet.

Prep Videos

Watch it being made

Step-by-step video tutorials for preparing Beets.

Steamed

How to Steam Beets and Blanch Greens

Leanne Valenti

1:26

Seasonality & sourcing

Find Beets near you

Discover farms, markets, and retailers with Beets in your area and check seasonal availability.

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Beets Trivia

Things worth knowing about Beets.

Surprising facts, culinary wisdom, and nutritional highlights that make beets a remarkable ingredient.

Why were beet greens prized before the roots?

For centuries, Mediterranean cultures cultivated beets exclusively for their mineral-rich leaves, treating the roots as livestock feed. The sweet, bulbous beetroot we treasure today wasn't developed until 16th-century European farmers began selecting for larger, more flavorful underground storage organs. The leaves remain more nutritionally concentrated than the roots.

How did Napoleon's wars change sugar forever?

When British naval blockades cut off Caribbean sugar cane in 1806, Napoleon offered a massive bounty for domestic sugar production. French chemist Andreas Marggraf had already isolated sugar from white beets, but wartime necessity drove the industrial refinement process. Today's sugar beet industry traces directly to those Napoleonic innovations, producing nearly 20% of the world's sugar.

What makes beet sugar different from cane sugar?

Chemically identical once refined, beet and cane sugars behave differently during extraction. Beet sugar requires higher temperatures and more processing to remove earthy compounds, while cane sugar's tropical origins make it easier to purify. In baking, some pastry chefs swear they can detect beet sugar's subtly mineral finish, though blind taste tests rarely confirm this.

“The beet is the most intense of vegetables. The radish, admittedly, is more feverish, but the fire of the radish is a cold fire, the fire of discontent not of passion. Tomatoes are lusty enough, yet there runs through tomatoes an undercurrent of frivolity. Beets are deadly serious.”

— Tom Robbins, Jitterbug Perfume, 1984

Why do beets turn everything pink?

Betalains, the pigments responsible for beets' crimson color, are water-soluble molecules unique to the botanical family that includes beets, chard, and prickly pear cactus. Unlike anthocyanins found in red berries, betalains maintain their vivid color across a wide pH range, making them prized by natural food colorists. They're also why some people's urine turns pink after eating beets—a harmless condition called beeturia.

How do beets survive winter underground?

As biennial plants, beets spend their first year storing concentrated sugars and starches in their taproot, preparing for next year's flowering push. This survival strategy makes them naturally sweet and dense, able to withstand soil temperatures that would kill annual crops. Their waxy skin and low water content prevent cellular damage from freezing and thawing cycles.

What gives golden beets their sunshine color?

Yellow beets contain betaxanthins instead of the betacyanins that create red varieties' crimson hue. Both are betalain pigments, but betaxanthins reflect yellow wavelengths while maintaining the same earthy-sweet flavor profile. Chioggia beets showcase both pigments in concentric rings, creating their distinctive candy-stripe appearance when sliced.

About

The story

The knife slides through crimson flesh, releasing that unmistakable scent—earthy, sweet, faintly metallic, like rain on iron-rich soil. Juice the color of garnets pools on the cutting board, staining everything it touches with evidence of the earth's alchemy. This is autumn's gift from the fields where small farmers tend rows of burgundy globes, their leafy tops catching morning frost while roots below concentrate summer's sweetness into winter storage.

In October's harvest rhythm, beets emerge from cold soil with their papery skins still clinging to memories of underground darkness. Local growers know the secret timing—harvesting after the first light frosts that signal the plants to pump final sugars downward, creating the dense, sweet roots that will sustain us through shorter days. These are vegetables that understand seasons, that know how to wait and when to yield, carrying the particular terroir of the fields where they grew slowly through summer heat and autumn chill. From the ancient Mediterranean gardens where their leaves fed emperors to the sugar beet fields that changed the course of empires, these humble roots have quietly shaped culinary history. Today's small farms continue that legacy, growing rainbow varieties that paint farmers' market tables in shades from golden sunrise to deep burgundy, each one a concentrated taste of place and season, ready to transform into everything from silky soups to earth-stained salads that taste of October itself.

Frost Sweetens Flavor

Light frosts trigger beets to convert starches to sugars, concentrating sweetness. Many farmers delay harvest until after first frost for peak flavor development.

Rainbow of Varieties

Beyond red beets, heirloom varieties include golden, white, and candy-striped Chioggia types. Each offers the same earthy sweetness with distinct visual appeal.

Two Season Crop

Smart farmers plant twice yearly—spring crops for summer harvest and late summer plantings for fall's sweetest beets. Cold weather concentrates flavors.

Edible From Top Down

Beet greens are entirely edible and more mineral-rich than the roots. Young leaves work raw in salads; mature greens braise beautifully like chard.

Cultivars