Monday, June 2, 2008

Doctor! My pee is red!!

A common complaint of a new beet eater is that soon after beet ingestion, the urine turns a shade of red that can be mistaken as blood. Not to worry! It's just the red pigment of the beets and not another urinary tract infection or kidney stone. So continue to enjoy the lovely beet salad shown below. Oh yes, and the same phenomenon can occur in the poop.

Sauteed Beet Green Salad with Roasted Beets (oh yeah and some chicken apple sausage too!)

I like to wash my beets the day of purchase because they typically come with a lot of grit that I don't like setting up abode in my fridge.



I clip off the greens above where they join onto the beet because then they won't bleed as much when they are being cooked which causes a lot of loss of the red pigment (anthocyanins) which are purported to have lots of those trendy antioxidant properties.

Then I drizzle the beets with oil, sprinkle with salt and freshly ground pepper and roast covered in foil at 400 deg. Celsius for ~ 1 hour or until they are pierced easily with a fork. The beets are much easier to peel when cool, so I usually do that the next day in the prep phase for the salad.

The greens, I usually steam the same night and then sautee in olive oil, garlic and shallots the next day before making the salad.





Here is said salad with a side of chicken apple sausage. This is a Germany type meal that my man friend enjoys very much. Yum!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hey, I made a roasted beet salad last night, too! What are the odds? (I like to take the foil off for the last 15 minutes of roasting, for a bit of colour and texture on the beets.) I highly recommend roasted beets with goat cheese on some baby greens with a simple vinaigrette.
I noticed the excremental redness a few months ago - thank you for the scientific name for the red compound. Anthocyanin is so much more sophisticated than 'the red stuff in my poop from the beets'.

Jenny T. said...

Oh, I forgot to say that there was gorgonzola sprinkled on top of the beet salad. Mmmmm.... stinky cheese!