B Is For Beetroot

Few vegetables divide opinion quite like the beetroot. For some, it conjures memories of school dinners and vinegar soaked jars, hardly the stuff of culinary romance. For others, and increasingly for chefs across the country, it is one of the most versatile and visually striking ingredients in the modern British kitchen. Deep, earthy and impossibly vivid in colour, the beetroot has quietly earned itself a place among the most fashionable vegetables of the moment.

Beetroot has a long and rather noble history. Its wild ancestor, sea beet, grew along the coasts of Europe, North Africa and Asia, and was originally prized more for its leaves than its root. It was the Romans who began cultivating the root itself, and by the sixteenth century the beetroot we recognise today, round, crimson and sweetly earthy, had become a familiar sight across European kitchens. It later travelled with settlers and traders to become a staple in Eastern European cooking, most famously in the form of borscht, and has since found its way into everything from Middle Eastern mezze to contemporary British tasting menus.

An Earthy Transformation

What makes the beetroot so compelling is its remarkable adaptability. Raw, it offers a crisp, almost peppery bite that works beautifully thinly sliced in salads. Roasted, it becomes tender and deeply sweet, its natural sugars caramelising to create something altogether more luxurious. Pickled, it takes on a tang that has kept it a fixture of British larders for generations. Blended, it lends soups and even baked goods an extraordinary depth of colour and a subtle, almost chocolatey sweetness.

Its striking hue, thanks to a pigment called betalain, has made beetroot something of a darling among chefs looking to bring drama to the plate without artificial colouring. It has also found favour with the health conscious, prized for its nitrate content and its long association with improved circulation and stamina, making it as popular among endurance athletes as it is among fine dining chefs.

Perhaps most impressively, the beetroot wastes very little of itself. Its leaves, often discarded, are in fact closely related to chard and can be sautéed or wilted in much the same way, offering a peppery, mineral rich green that deserves just as much attention as the root beneath it.

Fun Facts About Beetroot

• Beetroot juice was used as a natural dye and even as a substitute for blood in early stage productions and films before the days of modern special effects.
  

• The vegetable's deep red colour can pass through the body largely unchanged, occasionally causing a harmless but startling condition known as beeturia.
  

• Beetroot is a close relative of spinach, chard and quinoa, all belonging to the same botanical family.
  

• During the Second World War, beetroot was used in Britain as a natural alternative to sugar and food colouring, given how scarce both had become.

Using Beetroot In The Kitchen

1. Roast whole in foil with a little oil and thyme until tender, then peel and toss in a warm salad with goats cheese and walnuts.
   

2. Grate raw beetroot into a slaw with apple, fennel and a mustard dressing for a fresh, crunchy side dish.
   

3. Blend cooked beetroot into a silky soup with horseradish and a swirl of crème fraîche.
   

4. Use beetroot puree in place of some of the fat in chocolate cakes and brownies for a moist crumb and a subtle depth of flavour.

The beetroot has come a long way from the vinegar jar, proving itself to be as elegant as it is humble. Whether roasted, pickled or blended into something entirely unexpected, it remains a vegetable capable of surprising even the most seasoned cook.

As the saying goes, good things come from the earth, and few vegetables prove that quite so vividly as the beetroot.