Glazed Baby Beets

I believed it was good

The marinade is great, but my beets cooked for almost an hour and still weren’t done.  I had to add more liquid to the pan after 40 minutes. I don’t like beets, but I want to have more veggies and Alton Brown’s recipes always give me the best chance of liking a food.

Preparing borscht for our traditional Christmas Eve dinner – had beets from the soup (we serve the soup clear) that looked so beautiful, I just couldn’t throw them out so, sliced them up and glazed with the recipe above and they are not only gorgeous but delicious.  Feeling very smug about getting two wonderful dishes from the original beets!

The vinaigrette has a great flavor. If you don’t like beets to begin with, you may not like this recipe but it is not Alton’s fault. I am not a huge fan of beets but I am trying to incorporate them in my diet. I think I would like to mix these with other vegetables after they stew in the marinade for a while. Maybe chopped fine over deviled eggs would be good too.

This recipe was exactly what I was looking for– quick, easy, and delicious. I substituted apple juice and maple syrup (for apricot and honey), and apple-cider vinegar. I used quartered regular-sized beets instead of baby beets. The glaze adds extra sweetness. You can pour the excess on some of the beets to make them more kid-friendly. The beety-flavor was still there, but I agree with the other reviewer who said it diminished the natural flavor. The skins can be easily peeled after cooking if desired. I had mine with the skins on.

good

Being a Beet-Lover, my opinion of this Alton Brown recipe is that it’s a fair spin on a beet. The finished product has a strong yet very pleasant flavor, mixing tangy with sweet, tart with mellow. I noticed a hint of each ingredient as an integral component with not too much of any single flavor. The end result is a classic Polynesian style “Sweet & Sour Beet” if you will. The sauce was velvety and rich. However, I like Beets just fine boiled with a hint of vinegar, so this recipe, a powerhouse of complex flavors, in my opinion diminishes the natural flavor beets.

Now for the opinion of a Beet-hater, my wife has said she prefers this dish over the classic boiled beet. The sentiment is that it doesnt taste like dirt. (her words not mine) The flavor starts very un-beet-like, sweet and flavorful, and finishes with a beet flavor, the beet flavor is what she would prefer not to taste at all… cant please ’em all, but this dish comes close.

So, all in all, I rate this a 4 out of 5. The beets have definate character and the flavors are a complex mix… you may feel it is too intense, or you may love it. Give it a try, I used Kern’s Apricot Nectar, Wild Honey, and White Balsamic vinegar. If Baby beets are not available, simply cut medium beets in half, then cut the halves in half (2 perpendicular cuts).. Works great!

I didn’t have white basalmic or apriciot juice or baby beets, but I did have a huge fresh beet, apple juice, an orange and regular basalmic vinegar. I chopped up the beet into small pieces (my hands are still red 🙂 and cooked the beets in the apple/orange/basalmic juice for 30 minutes. I’m sure the premium ingredients would make it better, but I enjoyed what I made. The juice reduced to a glaze and made the beets very tasty.

this recipe sounds great but my experience with beets is that you need to cook them at least 45 minutes and then rub the skin off. I don’t see any ref to the skin in the recipe. Addressing this issue would be helpful.

I’ve been on a beet kick recently but it’s no wonder why I’ve only recently come to love these ruby red delights: my mom always ate the gross ones from a can!

Thankfully, my adventuresome side tempted me to try fresh beets: roasted, grilled, fried and steamed, each time more delicious than the last. I even planted them in my garden this year!

OK, so enough about me, back to the recipe. I didn’t have/couldn’t find baby beets so I just took one great big (and I mean BIG) beet, roasted it, cut it into big chunks and then prepared it as the recipe instructed. WOW…so good. I can only imagine that one could elaborate on this recipe further by adding various greens, cheeses and other savory ingredients.

If you aren’t sure about beets, please try this. If you still hate beets after trying this, I won’t judge you…you just don’t like ’em. But it’s still worth a shot, especially if you grew up on the canned nasties like I did.