Best Roasted Beets

This last week, I found myself whisking up the fourth feast for a table full of family friends. Tapas, I decided. (Strangely I am a paragon of decisiveness in the kitchen, despite my wavering, often fickle nature in the rest of life.) I chose a couple traditional Spanish dishes, including albondigas (juicy, herby meatballs with an accompanying mayonnaise) and champiñones al ajillo (a pungent plate of garlicky mushrooms). Then I picked out a beautiful Mediterranean potato salad drizzled with an olive oil, balsamic, anchovy, and caper dressing. Add to this a butter-simmered green bean and olive salad as well as a pan of flash-fried calamari, and I almost had a meal. But we needed just one more nibble . . .

Rooting around in the fridge to see what else lay in store, I found a couple beets. Perfect! Roasted beets topped with soft crumbled goat cheese. Taking a tip from the Culinary Institute of America’s text book, I discovered an easy solution to my long-time beet roasting struggle. Previously, I had simply treated beets in the same way I treat potatoes: peel and chop, place on a baking sheet with plenty of oil and seasoning and bung them into a decently hot oven until done. Only this method is sadly unsuited, I have repeatedly discovered, to the chemical composition of beets. Please don’t ask for a technical explanation, I was a liberal studies major for a reason. The result was always a pan full of shriveled leathery morsels that looked and tasted profoundly unsatisfactory.

The key, I discovered, is to first cook the beets in water. This way they cook through, becoming tender while maintaining their cheery plumpness. Finally you drain off the water, pump up the oven and finish them off with a hot, oily roasting.These specimens were a revelation: a soft, rich center cocooned in a thin, crispy coat. So, here’s a recipe that will raise the often beleaguered beet to its rightful place in the roasting family:

Ingredients:
A couple pounds of beets
A few good glugs of olive oil
Salt and pepper
A couple ounces of soft goat cheese

Peel, quarter, and dice beets. Place in a large pan and pour in enough water to just cover bottom of pan. Cover with foil and cook in the oven at 375° F for about 45 minutes or until just cooked through. Remove beets and raise roasting temperature to 450° F. Drain off water and return beets to the pan with enough olive oil to coat. Season the beets with salt and pepper before returning them to the oven until nice and crisp. Sprinkle with crumbled goat cheese before serving.