31 Jul Beets
I’ll never forget the first time I ate a beet. It was terrible.
To save you the pain I felt, just know that I thought it was cranberry sauce. This stained my memory of beets for over a decade. It also stained my teeth.
Fifteen years later and I’ve finally come around on these blood-red vegetables. The irony of all this is that beets contain more natural sugar than cranberries. Go figure. I never thought I’d be the guy ordering a roasted beet salad with goat cheese and balsamic dressing, or saving beetroot tops to blanch and sautee with garlic and oil. I guesss this is growing up? Unclear.
You might think beets and cocktails have no business working together, but you’re wrong. You’re very, very wrong. A beet shrub will elevate most sparkling cocktails while adding vegetable bitterness and making the whole thing so much more… mature. Any citrus fruit is a good candidate to play nice, as is honey. Cocktails need sweetness to work correctly, and there’s enough sugar in beets to go around for everyone.
Inviting beets to the party is a bold choice, and needs an equally bold party guest. Enter Campari. They might be mad that they wore than same outfit, but they’ll soon find they actually have a lot in common.
A beet Negroni is a divine experience, one I developed a taste for during my time in the nation’s capital, even if I can’t recall who developed this recipe first. All I know is any recipe that calls for Campari is equally suited for beet-infused Campari. Stir it into a Negroni, or shake it into a jungle bird with rum(s) and citrus. Keep it in the freezer and drink it with soda, no ice, like the Italians do, you maniac. See if I care.
At the house, we’ve taken leftover borsch brine (beet, sugar, salt, vinegar) and frozen it into ice cubes, then used those cubes to cool a Bicicletta. It was delicious, but we are insane people. Proceed at your own risk.
Regardless, this is a great way to impress dinner guests with some vegetable-laden pre-dinner aperitivo. Just wear gloves while handling the beets. You’ll need them.
Beet Negroni:
Ingredients:
1.0 fl oz gin (preferrably Junipero or Aviation)
1.0 fl oz sweet vermouth (preferably Dolin Red)
1.0 fl oz beet-infused Campari
+orange, for garnishing
Combine all ingredients in a mixing glass, add ice and stir briskly for 20-30 seconds. Strain into a wide-brimmed old fashioned glass over large ice cubes. Garnish with either an orange slice or an orange swathe (oils expressed over the glass). Enjoy.
Beet-Infused Campari:
Ingredients:
1x 750ml bottle, Campari
2 medium red beets
2 tsp olive oil
salt
pepper
Equipment:
Mesh Strainer (wide)
Coffee filters
2 containers capable of holding 1L (for straining)
Plastic gloves
Vegetable peeler
Baking sheet
Knife
- Roast beets. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit. Peel and chop beets into 1.5 inch chunks (wear gloves!) and toss with olive oil, as well as a light amount of salt and pepper. Once the oven is pre-heated, roast in the oven until beets are fully cooked through, about 35 minutes. The beets should be fork tender, but caramelized on the outside.
- Pulse beets. Once the beets have been roasted, place the beets inside a food processor and pulse until only a roughly chopped paste remains, being careful not to aerate the mixture (be careful with a blender, we don’t want to juice the mixture, just increase the surface area for infusion).
- Infuse + Strain. Combine with the Campari in a separate glass container at room temperature for 4-6 hours, until flavor is to your liking. Strain through a coffee filter-lined mesh strainer and store in the fridge (in the labelled original bottle of Campari) for up to one month. This mixture should contain enough alcohol to prevent bacterial growth, but better safe than sorry.