Roasted Beetroot

I've had a really good beetroot crop this year. I went out the other day and picked loads of them, mainly to give the remaining ones enough space to grow into something decent too. The next day I boiled up the little ones and created a satisfying 2lb Kilner jar full of pickled whole baby beets for us to enjoy in the winter. I also boiled up some of the bigger ones and ate them cold with salad over the next few days. Then there was the beetroot cake that I blogged about the other day. Fortunately, I love beetroot.

There is a bit of a downside to beetroot and that is, given that it is most often eaten cooked but cold and it takes about an hour to boil a cricket sized beetroot, it does take a bit of forward planning to have some cooked and cooled when needed. It is most annoying when assembling a meal and thinking about the veg that will go well with it to remember that you are all out of cooked beetroot; especially if you have a big bagful of raw beetroot in plain sight!

If I'm having salad and I realise I have forgotten to pre-cook the beetroot then I make some coleslaw with it instead. Some red cabbage, grated raw beetroot and a little bit of red onion, seasoned and dolloped with mayo is both easy to make and tasty. It is probably really good for you too, given all those riboflavinoids!

However, yesterday as I contemplated the best way to eat the sausages I had bought at Wolverton Farmers Market at the weekend, I realised that somewhere along my train of thought I had come to the decision that we would be having mash and gravy and cold beetroot doesn't go well with gravy and nor does coleslaw. Ahhh... but what about having it roasted?! And so in my mind developed the idea of roasted seasonal vegetables.

To hand were red onion, carrots, parsnip, patty pan squash and elephant garlic, along with beetroot of course. I peel and chopped all of them and put them in a bowl (without the beetroot) with some olive oil and seasoning and gave them a good stir. I put them in a roasting tin and then added the beetroot to the empty bowl. There was enough oil and seasoning left in the bowl to coat the beetroot and I put in a splash of Balsamic vinegar for good measure. I put the beetroot down one end of the roasting dish so as not to turn the other vegetables pink then roasted the lot at 190°C for a hour, adding the sausages to the oven after half and hour. They only needed mixing around once and came out of the oven when just beginning to brown. So that is definitely a good way to eat beetroot but now I'm off to boil some more so that I've got some cooked and cooled to eat with our burger and salad tonight!