Quick Marinated Beets

Colorful Addition to Meals

Recipe by Robin

Long before I started Seasonal Eating, I loved making up recipes. Most of the time I just cooked them, but sometimes I wrote them down. I was not an organizer by nature, and had recipes scattered throughout my hard drive and on miscellaneous odd sheets of paper here and there. Often the notes were cryptic, scrawled so that I couldn’t read, much less interpret, my own writing. I lucked out on this recipe though. Hidden as it was in the depths of an old hard drive, it recently surfaced after a major crash and restoration. Perhaps the only reason I suffered the hard drive crash was to lead me back to this simple beet recipe. Maybe.

Beets Plus Marinade, What Could be Simpler?

Oddly enough, I’d been looking at making a beet recipe from a Polish cookbook with the same ingredients, plus onion. In the Polish recipe, beets are fried up with onion, then vinegar, sugar, and salt are added in unspecified amounts. My recipe is even simpler to prepare: beets are boiled till just tender, then cut up, and marinated in the same vinegar, sugar, salt combo—but in specified amounts. A bit of water in the mix mellows the harshness of the vinegar. Perhaps my Polish ancestors were helping me out as I created this recipe.

Enjoy these beets hot, chilled, or at room temperature.

Just a Few Marinade Ingredients

Robin’s Quick Marinated Beets

serves ~4

1 bunch red beets

1 bunch golden beets

2 tbsp. balsamic vinegar

1 tbsp. cider vinegar

2 tbsp. water

½ t salt

¼ t sugar

Bring whole beets to boil and cook till just tender, about 15 - 20 minutes.

Drain beets, rinse with cold water, and peel. Slice beets 3/8 inch thick while still warm, or grate them. Put beets into a sealed container that can be turned upside down without leaking.

Mix together vinegar, water, salt, and sugar. Pour over beets. To make sure all beets marinate, invert container every 10-15 minutes. Marinate for 30 - 60 minutes, or more.

Serve hot (reheat in microwave), chilled, or at room temperature.

Variation: Use Two Bunches of Red Beets