How To Roast Beets - Without Using Foil

Oh beets! Where have you been all my life! Bryan and I have fallen hard for this versatile root vegetable and we have a constant stock of roasted beets in our fridge. If you're wondering how to roast beets... you've come to the right place!

These easy oven roasted beets are:

So Flavourful
Naturally Sweet
Wondefully Inexpensive
And Incredibly Versatile

Watch how easy it is for me to roast beets in the video below!

Although beets are grown locally in Ontario, neither Bryan or I grew up eating them. Considering Bryan is Polish this is especially surprising! But when we travelled to Poland and Belarus in 2018 and beets were all around, Bryan's Polish heart was set aflame and thus began his love affair.

Cooking With Beets

Our first introduction to beets was the most delicious home-cooked Borscht in Belarus. When we returned from that trip we immediately set out to try and recreate the tastiness of a big bowl of beet soup.

Click here to see all of our beet recipes. Some of our favourites are:

Borscht (beetroot soup)
Beet Chocolate Smoothies (trust us!)
Creamy beet pasta sauces (like our Pinkest Pasta In The World!)
Glazed beets on top of salads or our Pumpkin Beet Polenta,
A flaky Beet Wellington...

Gosh the list could go on and on!

The Cost

The deep purple, sweet root of the beetroot plant is what we will be roasting but the plant has tasty green leaves. We find that it typically costs less to buy just the root, already cut from the greens.

• We find that beetroots cost approximately CAD $0.75 each. That's a whole lot of goodness for $0.75!
• Whereas, a bunch of beets with the greens on usually has 3 beetroots and costs approximately CAD $4.99.

Although beet greens are very tasty and can be used just as you would any other green leaf, for roasting purposes, we buy our beets without the greens.

The Greens

If you do buy your beets with the green tops on:

• Cut the greens off when you bring your beetroot home. Storing the greens separately from the root will help the root stay fresher longer.
• Use the greens within a couple of days. You can add them to salads, soups, saute them for pastas or throw them in with your veggie scraps for our homemade broth!
• Make our Beautiful Sauteed Beet Green Side Dish! And better yet... add them to the top of our Pumpkin Beet Polenta!

How To Roast Beets

1. Preheat your oven to 400 degrees F.
2. Brush any loose dirt from your beets.
3. Arrange on a baking tray lined with parchment paper.
4. Rub a little olive oil on each beet with your hands.
5. Place in the oven and roast for 40 minutes.
6. Your beets are cooked when you can easily pierce the skin with a fork.

*Smaller beets should be done after 40 minutes. Larger beets may take closer to 1 hour.
*I have tried to roast beets without rubbing the skins with oil. It's certainly possible but I found the beets took longer to cook and removing the skins was more difficult. If you avoid oil you can omit it or roast the beets wrapped in aluminum foil with a bit of water to help them steam.
*You can boil or steam beets as an alternative to roasting them in the oven but I find this version to be the tastiest and the one that preserves the most colour.

If you want more info on the various methods for cooking beets check out this great blog post by Jessica Gavin.

Peeling Roasted Beets?

When I started roasting beets I was hesitant to get my hands in there for fear of them getting too stained. But I've actually found that the pink staining washes off quite easily!

When your beets are cool enough to handle:

1. Slice the top and bottoms off the roasted beet, discarding the root end and the stem end.
2. Use a fork and your fingers to loosen the skins and pull them off in strips.
3. If you don't want to get your hands dirty, you can rub the skins off using a paper towel.
4. This process might be slightly painstaking but it hasn't been annoying enough to deter me from having the constant tastiness of roasted beets in my fridge.

Storing Roasted Beets

Store your roasted and peeled beets in an air-tight container in the fridge for up to 1 week. When you need them, you can dig in, pop them in your blender, or slice them up as you need.

We tend to buy 5 to 6 beets at a time for roasting them. When selecting beets from the grocery store:

• Select beets that are firm to the touch.
• Smaller beets will be sweeter than large beets and take less time to roast.
• Roast your beets within 2, maybe 3, days of buying them. I find they will start to get soft if left for too long.

If you're interested in all the wonderful nutritional benefits of beets check out this post by healthline.

Can You Eat Beets Raw

You can eat them raw. They will be harder to peel and will be quite crunchy. Cooking them softens the skins making them easy to peel and makes the beets wonderfully soft and smooth to eat.

So what do you think? Are tasty roasted beets going to become a staple in your fridge too?

Let us know if you give this a try in the comments below and remember to show us the pictures of your creations using #tastythriftytimely on Instagram!