Nutritional value

Antioxidants, folic acid, fibre, vitamins B and C, potassium, magnesium, copper and zinc 

Storage

A cool, dry place beetroot will last for a couple of weeks. Trim off the leaves and use within a day or two.

Season

July to January.

Choose

Firm, bright, wrinkle free beets.

Uses

Soups, boil, steam, bake, roast, cold in salads, grated raw in salads. The leaves can be cooked and taste spinach-like.

Recipe

Beetroot salad

You can't beat them

Beta vulgaris

Forget those pickled in jars, this nourishing and warming root vegetable, with its earthy flavour, injects colour and sweetness into any dish. Betacyanin, the pigment that gives beetroot its wonderful vibrant, colour, has powerful antioxidant properties.

Unsurprisingly from its sweet taste, beetroot has a high sugar content (up to 10 per cent) which is slowly released into the body.

Beetroot is in the Chenopodiaceae family, accompanied by sugar beet, chard and spinach. An ancestor of wild seabeet, beetroot was used medicinally by the Greeks and Romans, the globe form being developed in the 16th century. By the 18th century its popularity had spread, and is still widely used in Scandinavian Eastern European countries and Russia.

When preparing beetroot for boiling, steaming or baking do not pierce skins or cut root as juices will bleed out into the water.

Beetroot do not thaw well from freezing.