Beets are a polarizing vegetable. Mention them and you’ll get either extreme praise or a screwed-up face and a story about the canned beets a parent or grandparent made them eat growing up. One bad childhood experience, and the whole vegetable is ruined for life.
I didn’t eat many beets growing up, which turned out to be a gift. When I was working as a personal chef in NYC, beets were always at the farmer’s market I shopped, and I got to experiment with zero baggage. I found a lot of ways I loved cooking them, and fast.
I’ve shared many of those recipes here on Sweet Potato Soul over the years — with more coming — so I figured I’d do my part for humanity and gather them all in one place. Consider this a resource for the beet lovers and a conversion attempt for everyone else.
For more tasty vegetable recipes, try my Vegan Collard Greens, Air Fryer Eggplant, Broccoli Salad, and Zesty Black Bean and Corn Salad.
What to Look for When Buying Beets
If you’ve written beets off, the beets themselves might be the problem. Size is the biggest factor: small ones — golf ball to tennis ball — are noticeably sweeter and more tender, while oversized ones turn woody and fibrous.
Those big woody beets and a childhood run-in with the canned kind are usually what people are remembering when they say they don’t like beets.
What to look for:
- Firm beetroots with no give. Soft spots or shriveled skin mean they’ve been sitting a while.
- Greens still attached. They should be perky and deep-colored, not slimy or yellowing — the clearest sign of freshness. Bonus: the greens are delicious in pesto or sautéed like chard.
- No greens? No problem. Grocers often cut the greens off — especially in winter — to keep the roots fresh longer. You just lose your easiest freshness check, so go by firmness instead.
Red beets are the classic, golden beets are milder and less earthy (a good entry point for skeptics), and candy-striped Chioggia are prettiest raw and shaved, since the stripes fade with cooking.
How to Cook Beets
There’s no single right way to cook a beet. In fact, there are many methods and they all have their own merits:
Roasting
Why and When: You want the sweetest, deepest flavor and don’t mind the wait.
How: Scrub the beets but don’t peel them. Toss with a tablespoon or two of olive oil, spread on a rimmed baking sheet, and roast at 400°F for 40–50 minutes, until a fork pierces them easily. Let them cool at room temperature until they’re safe to handle, then trim the base and peel — the skins should slip right off.
Boiling
Why and When: beet is going into a soup or dip and you want it mild and tender.
How: Scrub the beets and leave them whole, with an inch of stem and the root tail intact so they don’t bleed out into the water. Cover with cold water, bring to a boil, then simmer 30–45 minutes depending on size, until a knife goes in without resistance. Drain, cool, and slip the skins off.
Air Frying
Why: For crisp edges and a hands-off cook.
How: Trim, peel, and cut the beets into ½-inch wedges. Toss with olive oil, salt, and pepper, then air fry at 350°F for 40–50 minutes (stirring occasionally), until fork-tender.
Raw
Why and When: You want crunch and color in a slaw or smoothie.
How: Shred them with a food processor or a handheld grater for slaws and salads, or blend them straight into smoothies.
How to Store Beets
- Raw: Cut the greens off as soon as you get home, leaving about an inch of stem. Store the beets unwashed and untrimmed in a bag or container in the crisper for 2–3 weeks, and the greens separately for 3–4 days.
- Cooked: Keep them in an airtight container in the fridge for 4–5 days. Leftover roasted beets are excellent cold, so a batch on Sunday is a week of salads.
- Freezing: Cook them first — raw beets freeze poorly and turn mealy. Cool, peel, and cube them, then freeze on a sheet pan before bagging so they don’t clump. They’ll keep 2–3 months and are best in smoothies, soups, and hummus, where texture matters less.
Substituting Pre-Cooked Beets
Pre-cooked beets — the refrigerated vacuum-packed kind or the shelf-stable ones — are a great shortcut, especially on busy weeknights. Use them anywhere a recipe calls for beets that are already cooked: soups, dips, smoothies, grain bowls, salads.
They won’t work in a recipe that roasts the beets as part of the cooking. That step isn’t just about getting them tender — it’s where the sugars concentrate and the flavor deepens. You only get that from the roasting itself.
A few things to know before you swap:
- Read the label. Make sure they’re plain, not pickled or seasoned. The two sit side by side at the store, and a pickled beet in a smoothie is a bad day.
- Drain and pat them dry. They’re packed in liquid, and that extra moisture will thin out a dip or hummus.
- Expect a softer texture. They’re great blended into soups and dips, less great when you want a cube or slice to hold its shape in a salad.
- Figure one 8-ounce package for every two medium beets. Package sizes vary by brand, so check yours.
These are the recipes with beets I keep coming back to — the ones I make for company, for meal prep, and for myself on a Tuesday. A few let the beet take center stage. Others cast it as a supporting star. All of them are plant-based, delicious, and home-cook-friendly.
Beets make a gorgeous appetizer — that deep color will capture your guests’ attention before anyone even takes a bite. These are the beet dishes I reach for when I want a stunning, secretly doable appetizer to steal the show:
How I eat beets most often — there’s something about a bowl of majenta pink soup or a salad flecked with ruby cubes that never gets old. And both are meal-prep gold: make a batch Sunday, eat well all week.