Soups, Salads, Sauces, and Desserts: Recipes and Ideas for Beets

Store-bought hummus will never be as vibrantly colored or silky smooth as this easy homemade version from chef Saehee Cho. Serve with seasonal market crudités (fava beans, snap peas, and asparagus are all ideal for spring) and grilled pita or bread.

This dip can be a decadent vegetarian appetizer when served with flatbread, chips, or crudités, but also hearty and flavorful enough to work equally well as a vegetable side dish to meat or fish.

“Raita is the original savory yogurt bowl, and in India, it functions as a salad or a condiment,” says Nik Sharma, author of Season: Big Flavors, Beautiful Food (Chronicle Books), from which this recipe is adapted. Be sure your mustard seeds are fresh; they get bitter when they’re old (pop a few in hot oil before using, let cool, and taste).

Denver chef Alon Shaya suggests adding Aleppo peppers for a spicy kick or substituting orange juice for lemon to add more sweetness.

Proving the power of a well-stocked pantry, this vibrant appetizer takes just 5 minutes to stir together. The garam masala and garlic give it a big pop of flavor, while the beet powder provides the color and underlying earthy sweetness.

Beets are “ridiculous with bacon,” says Clare Carver, co-owner of Big Table Farm winery in Oregon’s Willamette Valley. There’s lots of garlic in her dish, but it candies and mellows in the bacon fat.

Think of this as “new and improved” borscht, with fruit and mint added for freshness and subtle spices for intrigue. If you like, roast extra beets to eat later in the week; they keep several days in the refrigerator.

Dandelion greens can be quite bitter, but the olive oil, lemon, and salt in the dressing—and the sweet beets—mellow them so they give no more than a pleasant edge to the salad. (That said, cultivated varieties like Cichorium intybus available at grocery stores and farmers’ markets, taste less aggressively bitter than the wild greens.) For the prettiest salad, go for a mix of beet colors such as red-and-white ringed Chioggia, golden Yellow Detroit, and reddish purple Bull’s Blood.

This easy four-ingredient beet salad is a great choice when you want to add both flavor and color to your table. 

This beet salad is full of bright colors and flavors, with sweet beets playing off tangy lime and orange.

Chef Jeremy Fox of Ubuntu restaurant in Napa roasts beets in an aromatic salt crust that infuses the kitchen and the beets with the fragrance of flowers and herbs. We’ve highlighted them in this simple salad. Prep and Cook Time: about 2 1/2 hours. Notes: To keep the beets from getting too salty, trim and scrub them enough to remove dirt but not the skin. To loosen the baked salt from the pan, soak in water.

This vibrant, shocking pink sauce, called maror, is served with matzo along with haroseth as part of the seder ceremony. It’s also great with short ribs during the meal.

By tossing each ingredient separately and adding seasonings to the dressing as you go, you’ll have an elegant salad with several layers of flavors (and plenty of vegetables). Prep and Cook Time: about 1 1/2 hours. Notes: Chioggia beets, available mainly at farmers’ markets, have beautiful concentric rings of red and white inside.

Make the most of your fresh farmers’ market beets with this soup, which uses the delicious leaves as well as the beets themselves.

These electric magenta cupcakes get their color not from the usual food coloring but from puréed roasted beets, which also add a subtle flavor. Don’t use canned or packaged steamed beets–the cupcakes’ color will be drab.