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Beet Greens
Wash young beets very clean, cut off tips of leaves, looking over carefully to see that no bugs or worms remain, but do not separate roots from leaves; fill dinner-pot half full of salted boiling water, add beets, boil from half to three-quarters of an hour; take out and drain in colander, pressing down with a large spoon, so as to get out all the water. Dish and dress with butter, pepper, and salt if needed. Serve hot with vinegar.
A plain nineteenth-century treatment of beet thinnings, roots and tops together. The one thing worth changing is the timing.
- Cook far less than half an hourBeet greens are tender and wilt in three to five minutes in boiling water; the small roots attached to them need perhaps ten to fifteen. Thirty to forty-five minutes reduces the leaves to olive-drab mush and leaches most of their flavour into the pot.
- "Young beets" means thinnings"Young beets" means small beets with tops on -- possibly the thinnings pulled to space a row, roots small enough to cook alongside the leaves. Supermarket beet greens sold in bunches, or chard, are the nearest equivalent; if the roots are golf-ball size or larger, cut them off and cook them separately.
- Grit, not bugsThe instruction to look for worms belongs to a garden crop. The modern problem is sand lodged where the stems meet the crown. Swish in a deep basin of water, lift the greens out rather than pouring off, and repeat until the water runs clear.
- The dinner-potA large stockpot. Half full of boiling salted water is more than needed for a few bunches, but greens do benefit from generous water and a hard boil so the pot does not drop off the boil when they go in.
- Pressing in the colanderWorth doing, and the reason the dish works. Beet greens hold a great deal of water; press firmly with the back of a spoon or squeeze in a clean towel, or the butter will slide off into a puddle at the bottom of the dish.
- The vinegarNot optional in spirit. The acid cuts the mineral, faintly earthy quality of the leaves. Cider vinegar suits it, as does malt or pepper vinegar.
- YieldA pound of untrimmed greens cooks down to roughly two modest servings. Plan on generous quantities.
The Dixie Cook-Book belongs to a family of late nineteenth-century American compilations in which the beet served twice over: the root, stored for winter, and the tops, eaten when the row was thinned. Beet greens were treated much as turnip and mustard greens were -- boiled, drained, buttered and sharpened with vinegar at the table -- though beet tops are the milder and shorter-lived of the group. The book's insistence that roots and leaves stay joined looks practical: cutting the root bleeds it.