Admittedly, I am a beet lover. Pickled beets, cooked beets with butter, raw beet salad . . . I like'em all.This year I blanched and froze the bulk of our beet crop. Now I wish I had made more of them into Pickled Beets because I finally found a recipe everyone seems to like. More of those will have to wait for another year. The ones I froze I am super-happy with. They are just as flavorful as ones taken straight out of the garden and cooked. (Good thing, too, as I squirreled away a LOT of them in the freezer.)
I saved just a very few (wish I could have a do-over on that also) to use in my oh-so-good Baked Veggie Casserole.
BAKED VEGGIE CASSEROLE
Peel and cut up beets, carrots, and onions. Scrub potatoes (small ones are perfect) and cut into serving size pieces. Peel several cloves (enough for your taste) of garlic and halve each clove . . . unless they're really big honkers and then you might want to slice them again.
Spread all veggies in a shallow layer in a buttered baking pan, dot with butter and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Add about 3 tablespoons water.
This is what mine looks like when ready for the oven. (The beets don't really show up against the blue speckled pan.)Cover tightly with foil and bake at 350° for 45 minutes or until veggies are fork tender.
This is the pan right out of the oven.The amounts of your veggies depend on what you personally like. I go heavy on the beets because I love them. And potatoes because that pleases my husband. The onions and garlic add lots of flavor.
The veggies look very reddish on the plate here because there is lots of buttery juice in the bottom of the baking pan (red from the beets) that I like to spoon over each serving.I heat any leftovers in a saucepan to serve with our breakfast eggs the next morning.
Tarnation. Why DIDN'T I save more beets unfrozen to use in this recipe? What was I thinking? (Not thinking, obviously.) I wonder if the frozen beet slices would work?
7 comments:
This looks seriously good!!
Does it go with Lutefisk?
Hi, Sue - Ya know, you can be deleted . . . ;o)
heeheehee Sue! Seriously though, beets? I will admit I have never tried them, can't get past the thought of the mushy looking ones I see on salad bars, lol! I think I will hold out on those at least until I crash your "beet party" in a few years and you can prepare me a proper beet, lol!
Erin - I can't BELIEVE a gardener like you hasn't planted beets . . . let alone never even eaten them. You're missing out on something good, girl. I may have to send you some beet seeds next spring and INSIST you plant them!
Oh, Beets! Yes, yes, worthy of rhapsodies!!! I too am a lover of beets--a fact made more poignant by the fact that our beet crop COMPLETELY failed this year. The unending rain managed to vanquish a crop I thought foolproof-- the combination of lack of sun, overabundance of moisture and resulting soil compaction seems to have defeated them. But I can hardly wait to try again next year. I love them roasted, pickled, boiled, shredded into salads...yummm. (I love Swiss Chard, too--which is simply a beet bred for its greens rather than its roots!)
Mmmmm, that looks pretty darn yummy! I love beets too, but will have to buy mine at the farmer's market this year as I had a disappointing harvest from my garden.
MaineCelt - I think you and I (beet lovers that we are) need to make a trip down to Virginia and force-fed some yummy beets to Erin so she realizes what she's been missing!
Ruthie - I guess I was lucky to get a good beet crop this year because I have heard of many others (like you and MaineCelt) who had no luck at all with their beet crop.
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