47 and still undecided if beetroot is great or terrible.

[FloorCushion]

Keep ordering it and putting it in salads thinking ‘yeah, this salad and ergo my life will be better with some soft purple stuff in it’ and then I eat it and I’m slightly unnerved by both the flavour and texture.

Does beetroot ever get better?

Honestly by 47 you really should've chosen your position now as you're needed in the monthly meetings.

TBF I’ve only knowingly had a beetroot chocolate cake once and you couldn’t taste the beetroot. It was on a “guess the secret ingredient” stand at a school fair and I guessed beetroot only because I knew it was a thing. The woman that baked it was a bit pissed off that I’d got it right.

Beetroot is vile. Made even more so by adding vinegar which is horrible.

The only way I've managed any is juicing it with fresh ginger.

Me too. There’s an organic growing cooperative near me and they sell big bunches of anything seasonal for a quid. I tried chioggia which has red and white circles inside in a salad and it was really nice and added a lovely splash of colour.

I love that Polish jar of mashed up Beetroot with horseradish, great as a side or with salad and jacket potato. Like borscht too.

Love beetroot and now want to try all the recipes here. Interestingly although I like the fudgy texture beetroot adds to chocolate cake I prefer other veg in cakes flavour wise.

Beetroot and Guinea fowl ( thank you Raymond Blanc) is wonderful in winter. I just use the vacuum packed one rather than doing the yucky peeling.

The pink wee aside of it can be disturbing. Being forwarned would help.

I vote for all beetroots carring a message about the chances of pink wee increasing with consumption. Or a TV/social media campaign would do.

What happens if you eat beetroot and asparagus together?

Do you get pink stinky wee?

It tastes like mud

Yes! That's it exactly. It made the chocolate beetroot cake I ate taste of mud.

I think most "Indian" restaurants in the UK are actually Pakistani or Bangladeshi @Tabbouleh. I have only knowingly eaten at a proper Indian restaurant a handful of times. I love Indian food and often make my own, and as far as I know I try to make authentic Indian food as opposed to restaurant favourites.

It's revolting 🤮

Loathesome in vinegar but lovely and sweet freshly cooked and warm. Bit of mayonnaise. Gorgeous. I love the odd earthy sweet taste

Just tastes of dirt to me. And it infects everything it touches with its dirty crimson juice.

I lived in Australia for a while and they love it there. It would turn up in burgers, salads, sandwiches. I had to check menus carefully and ask before ordering any kind of salad.

It's nearly as bad as mushrooms (weird slimy, dirt tasting things that they are).

I love it in any form. Raw, cooked, pickled. One of my favourite vegetables.

Hmm, off to raid the fridge for some now...

I think it’s one of those vegetables that how you cook/prepare it really, really affects whether it’s lovely or just dreadful. See also aubergine, okra, mushrooms, Brussels sprouts… and many more.

One of my issues with beetroot is that I grew up with only exposure to jarred, picked beetroot. 🤮 Worse, my mum (who seems to be obsessed with it), mostly used it in truly awful salads dressed with salad cream. The beetroot would turn it all pink and 🤮🤮🤮🤮.

I have had really lovely beetroot in restaurants (and even the strips of raw beetroot you get in bagged salad are nice) but my childhood means I have an almost reflex revulsion response when someone says beetroot.

I suspect there are ways of pickling it that would be nice. Sadly those ways are in no way captured by what we find on British supermarket shelves.

I grew up associating ‘pickled’ with horror. And I still feel that way about the stuff I find in my mum’s cupboards. But discovering how good pickles are in Asian cooking - loads of different cuisines, loads of ways to make nice pickled vegetables! - as an adult has made me realise that growing up with shit British cuisine was the problem. Not pickles.

I’ve never had a nice pickled beetroot (that I can remember) but I’m absolutely open to it being a possibility.

According to James Wong different varieties of beetroot have different levels of a compound called geosmin that causes the earthy taste - yellow or white ones generally have less. The pretty red and white one (chioggia) is very high in it. If you are a gardener and can get hold of the seeds, Detroit Dark Red and Lutz green leaf and Burpee's golden are low in geosmin so won't taste anything like as earthy.

I absolutely love the stuff in all its forms except the stripey chioggia type - so it's really interesting what you say about the geosmin, @UnaOfStormhold . I grew golden beetroot and when it's roasted - oh my goodness. Just utterly delicious, caramelised and scrummy. I'm maybe slightly less enamoured of chocolate and beetroot cake but that's possibly because chocolate isn't my favourite cake anyway.

Shameless peacemaking!

I hate vinegar beetroot but love it roasted... will try some of the raw recepies.

I bought some chilli beetroot recently and it was lovely. I don't like the ordinary version.

My mother has managed to come of her prescribed blood pressure tablets by taking beetroot pills.

I hate it- mostly because I work with very unwell children who use incontinence wear.
Thats never a fun time in the bathroom with a small child with a ton of medical issues trying to guess if they are bleeding internally, have some sort of tear somewhere or an issue with one of their feeding tubes or medications ir they just ate stupid beetroot again.
Plus it tastes like mud and stains everything.

I like it but preparing the fresh stuff does leave the kitchen looking like a crime scene

I love it on an Australian style hamburger 😁

Watching an old episode of Miranda and Gary's just offered to make her a sugar free beetroot cake!

monkeyupsidedown, an Aussie milkbar burger with beetroot is the biz. McDonald's in NZ used to put beetroot on a burger back in the day - don't know if it's still a thing.