I love to use everything I buy. It lowers your food cost and stretches your grocery money to its limit, and when you have a large family that’s essential. Here I show you how to saute your beet stalks. You’ve already used the beets themselves, and hopefully you’ve sautéed the beet greens (just use like spinach), but the stalks have always been thrown away. Now you can eat them and they’re quite nice really.
You don’t have to eat them by themselves, though I like to. You can put them in your meatloaf or juice them if you like, but here we’re doing a saute.
The method is simple.
- Cut your beet stalks into small pieces.
- Put them in a hot saute pan with a little oil.
- Salt them lightly, and add white pepper.
- You can finish with a touch of butter if you like.
- Stop cooking when they’re as done as you like them.*
*I hate it when cook books say “cook until desired doneness”, but there’s really no other way to say it here. Some people like them a little more crunchy and others like them softer. So I really can’t tell you how to make them. However, that said, I like them mostly done with enough crunch left to be able to not have them much up on me when I bite down. So I’d say I like them about 3/4 of the way cooked or so. Just keep taking them out and testing them until they’re what you want.
Beet stalks can also be used in sauces. You could put them in a white wine cream sauce and puree up the whole thing to get this fabulously colored bright red sauce. Then you can put that on lovely tilapia, or snapper, or other mild white fish. I could even see it on salmon. Of course, I’ve done it on pork and chicken breast so I know it’s good there. It’s subtle.
Anyway, take this lesson as a way to maximize food cost, because you’re buying the beets, leaves and the stalks, which means you’re losing money if you don’t eat these.