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Beet Greens (Beets are usually thickly)
Beets are usually thickly sowed, and as the young plants begin to grow they must be thinned out. These plants make delicious greens, and even the tops of the ordinary market beets are good if properly prepared. Examine the leaves carefully to be sure that there are no insects on them; wash thoroughly in several waters, and put over the fire in a large kettle of boiling water. Add a teaspoon of salt for every two quarts of greens; boil rapidly about thirty minutes or until tender; drain off the water; chop well and season with butter and salt.
A straightforward greens recipe from the era when all vegetables were boiled hard and long. The method works; only the timing needs rethinking.
- The thirty minutesBeet tops are tender and will collapse in 5 to 10 minutes of hard boiling — young thinnings in as little as 3. Half an hour turns them to khaki slush and leaches most of the flavour into the water. Cook until the stems yield to a knife point and stop there.
- Stems and leavesThe red stems take two or three minutes longer than the leaves. If the stalks are thicker than a pencil, drop them in first and add the leaves after.
- Washing in several watersThis is not padding. Beet greens grow low and hold grit in the crumpled leaf. Fill a sink, swish, lift the greens out rather than pouring off, and repeat until no sand settles.
- Salt quantityThe recipe measures salt against the volume of greens (a teaspoon per two quarts of greens), not against the water. Against a large kettle of water that is light seasoning; a common modern rule of thumb is nearer a tablespoon per four quarts of water, with further seasoning after draining.
- VolumeGreens cook down enormously. Reckon on a pound of raw tops — roughly the leaves from two bunches of beets — serving two people.
- Chopping and finishingChop after draining, while hot, and press out excess water before adding butter or the dish will be watery. A splash of cider vinegar or lemon at the table is the traditional partner and cuts the mineral edge.
- OxalatesBeet greens are high in oxalic acid, and boiling in plenty of water and discarding it removes some of it, as steaming does not. Anyone prone to kidney stones should treat them as an occasional vegetable.
Beet greens are a thrift dish born of the way beets are grown: seed is broadcast thickly, the seedlings crowd, and the surplus must be pulled so the roots below can swell. Rather than waste the thinnings, kitchen gardeners ate them, and the practice was old enough by the early twentieth century that a cook book could assume readers had a row of beets to thin. The note that "even the tops of the ordinary market beets are good" is aimed at city households buying bunched beets with the leaves still attached — a reminder that the greens were routinely thrown away by people who had not grown them. Beets themselves belong to the same species as chard, Beta vulgaris, which was cultivated for its leaves long before anyone selected it for a swollen root, so eating the tops is arguably the older use of the plant.