Boiled Beetroots with potatoes

By Elina Vogiatzaki

Beetroot has many health benefits. It is a great vegetable to include in your diet if you would like to maintain a healthy heart, lower your blood pressure and clean your veins from toxic compounds. Interestingly, beetroot leaves are even healthier than beetroot tubers as they contain more antioxidants. Thus, if you can find fresh beetroots don’t hesitate to boil also their leaves and eat them too.

I remember while growing up boiled beetroots with potatoes accompanied with fresh fish was our lunch most of Mondays. The goal was to eat some simple, low calorie and healthy food and include some fish in our diet. If it was not the beetroot season, we would replace beetroots with other seasonal greens that grow in the island of Crete. Amaranth leaves in the summer, or stamnagathi, other wild greens and dandelions in the spring.

Boiled beetroots with potatoes, is an extremely easy, balanced and quick recipe ideal for dinner but also for a lazy lunch. As a working mother, I prepare this at least once per week for my daughters either as lunch or dinner and they simply love it. The beetroot taste is sweet and they enjoy eating them while making jokes about the color that they leave on their tongue or their mouth. On the other hand, potatoes help to “break” the sweetness of the beetroots and fish is a healthy source of ω-3 fatty acids and protein.

Preparation: 5min
Cooking time: 30-40min
Difficulty: Easy

Recipe

Ingredients for 4 people

5-6 Beetroots fresh or boiled
5-6 Potatoes
olive oil
red grape vinegar
½ tsp salt

Instructions

How to cook beetroots: Wash the beetroots and put them in a casserole. Add water until the beetroots are well covered. Close the lid and cook them in medium to low fire until you can pinch them with a fork and they are soft. Boiling beetroots in a casserole may take 30-40min. You can also boil them in a pressure cooker in just 10min. I prefer the slow cooking way as more vitamins and healthy components are maintained.
Boil the potatoes separately as they take different amount of time to get cooked.
Remove the water and let them cool down.
Peel them and serve them.
Add salt, 2 tbsp. olive oil and 2 tbsp. vinegar in each dish and mix well.

Tips

How to buy beetroots:
I usually prefer to buy fresh beets and boil them myself, but if you don’t have the time you can also buy already boiled ones.
In order to be sure that you buy fresh beets, check their water consistency. The harder they are the more fresh they are. Usually, dried and shrank beets have been stored for a long time. If they still have their leaves still attached, check that the leaves are not dried or yellowish. The more shiny and fresh the leaves look, the fresher are the beets.
You can enjoy this dish with whole grain bread, some yellow salty cheese like Greek Graviera or Spanish Manchego and if you are pescatarian with some fresh fish [like Striped Red Mullet (Barbounia), gilt-head sea beam, mackerel] or even kalamaria and smoked trout.
In case you have any leftovers you can keep them in the fridge and prepare a nice green salad next day.
To save time, I usually boil the beetroots on Sunday and like that our lunch or dinner is almost ready for Monday.

Nutritional Value

Related Recipes

If you enjoy eating beetroot here are some more healthy and tasty recipes to try:

Pink salad with beetroot