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Beets
Be sure the beets are young and fresh. Old beets will never cook tender. The time for cooking beets depends on age and freshness. Cut off the tops to within an inch of the tuber; scrub with a vegetable brush, never cut. Cook in boiling water until tender, from 1 to 4 hours. When done plunge in cold water to remove the skins. Serve whole or sliced. Season with butter, salt and pepper.
A plain method for boiled beets, and the reasoning behind it still holds. Two details govern the result: leaving the beet intact so it does not bleed, and judging doneness by feel rather than the clock.
- Do not cut the beetLeaving an inch of stem and the whole taproot attached is the hinge of the recipe. Any knife cut lets the pigment and sugars leach into the water, giving pale beets and pink cooking liquid.
- The time range is real, but the top end is notOne to four hours likely reflects beets held in storage over the winter rather than freshly pulled ones; the recipe itself ties the time to age and freshness. Supermarket beets of 2-3 inches take 30-45 minutes; large ones an hour or so. Test with a skewer through the thickest part rather than watching the clock.
- Salt the waterThe original seasons only at the table. A tablespoon of salt in the cooking water seasons the flesh itself, and a splash of vinegar keeps the color bright.
- The cold plungeThis is for peeling, not for stopping the cooking. Once cool enough to hold, the skins slip off under thumb pressure. Beet juice stains hands and cutting boards; a bowl and gloves save trouble.
- Choosing beets"Young and fresh" means firm, unwrinkled, no more than about 3 inches across, ideally with lively greens still attached. Woody, flabby beets stay woody however long they boil.
- Don't waste the topsThe greens cut off at the start are edible and good, cooked like chard with butter or a little bacon fat.
- YieldThe original gives no quantities. As a rough modern guide, 1 1/2 to 2 lb of beets, about 4 to 6 medium, serves four as a side dish.
- An alternative worth knowingRoasting whole unpeeled beets, wrapped, at 400F for 45-60 minutes concentrates their sugar in a way boiling cannot. Same peeling method afterward.
Beets were a workhorse of the American cellar: they kept for months in sand or sawdust, which is consistent with a cookbook of this period allowing up to four hours of boiling and warning so firmly about age. The sweet red garden beet is a relatively late development of a plant grown in antiquity mainly for its leaves; a high-sugar form of the same species became the basis of the European sugar-beet industry from the early nineteenth century onward. A vegetable like this earns its place by being cheap, storable and available when almost nothing else fresh is.