Carrots and beets, that is! Every home garden should have a row of fall carrots—that most reliable of keeping vegetables -- and one of beets for winter eating. If you don’t have a garden, most market farmers have extra root vegetables at the end of the season, and would be happy to supply you with them.
This year my row of fall carrots got a late start, so I have ordered extra from a friend. Next week I will put her large, sweet storage carrots and beets –unwashed, but with tops cut just above the root and clods of dirt brushed off—into damp wood shavings in lidded plastic tubs in my unheated cellar. Then, through the long winter, a ready supply of locally-grown, fresh vegetables is only a few steps away—at the bottom of my cellar stairs.
Carrots and beets like cold, damp storage, such as an unheated cellar. Onions, garlic, and squash want cool, dry storage—the closet of a spare bedroom on the north side of the house, or an attic, or cool entryway off the kitchen. When you start thinking about it, its not hard to come up with places where you can squirrel away winter vegetables, and you’ll be glad you did. They taste so much better than anything you can buy in the supermarket, come January.
Before canning and refrigeration, the most common method of vegetable and fruit preservation was cold storage of food in its natural state. When the first English settlers arrived in New England almost 400 years ago, they were unprepared for the harshness of our winters. The houses they built resembled those they had known in English villages—but with a difference: in the New World they needed cellars to preserve the harvest which was essential to their survival. Many of our older houses have stone-walled cellars, whose purpose originally was not to house furnaces and hot water tanks, but to store food during the winter. Now most basements are too warm for keeping food. But all is not lost if you don’t have an unheated cellar. A corner furthest from the furnace can be partitioned off to achieve the desired coldness (32 – 40 degrees). A basement window well with the light blocked can be used for mini cold storage, as can the steps of a bulkhead door. A handy piece of equipment to have is a wireless thermometer. I tuck one down cellar near the vegetables, and monitor it from the kitchen.
The beauty of storing root vegetables in damp shavings in tubs with lids is that high humidity is maintained (without having to humidify a large space) and rodents are kept out. Experts recommend that a change of air is necessary to keep the vegetables fresh, but I have found that opening the bins several times a week in the normal course of collecting food seems to do well enough. Moisten the shavings evenly before layering with the roots. The vegetables may touch but not crowd each other. Put a good layer of wood shavings between each layer of vegetable. Cardboard boxes work well, too. The wood shavings tend to dry out faster in cardboard than plastic, and will need to be refreshed with water every month or so. I have not experimented with them, but clean sand or sawdust can be substituted for wood shavings. Parsnips, turnips and kohlrabi can also be stored this way.
This year we ate our last stored carrot July 1—eight months after we put it away. It was still sweet and amazingly crisp—and it had never been refrigerated. To my mind, that is independence!
Carrots are the workhorse of winter cooking, receding somewhat into the background as the aromatic base for soups and stews. Beets, while not quite as versatile as the carrot, are delicious roasted or grated raw in salad. Both are nourishing; packed with vitamins and minerals. Studies done in France, where the carrot is revered as the savory basis of almost everything, suggest that raw carrots alleviate digestive ailments, lower blood cholesterol, and reduce the risk of lung cancer in smokers. Beets, which were developed by German gardeners in the middle ages, are so concentrated, nutritionally speaking, that many vitamins are derived from them. Beets and their tops contain substances that detoxify the liver and clean the blood. In Europe beets are used in cancer therapy.
Roasting root vegetables sweetens and caramelizes them. Large carrots often have a woody core which is best cut out before cooking. Beets bleed when cut, so if you don’t want their juices staining other foods in the dish, cook them separately or roast in the oven with skins on, and slip off the skins when cooked. (I happen to love the jewel-like stain beets impart to other root vegetables when cooked together!)
Oven Roasted Carrots and Beets
Preheat oven to 400 F.
6 medium carrots
6 medium beets
¼ cup olive oil
Salt and pepper
Wash, peel and trim the ends of carrots and beets and cut them into pieces that are roughly the same size and shape.
In a large bowl, toss the carrots and beets together with the olive oil, and season generously with salt and pepper. Spread the vegetables evenly in a baking pan in a single layer, and roast, uncovered, stirring and tossing occasionally, until the vegetables are tender, for 20 to 45 minutes.
Serves 4 to 6
Salad of Beet, Apple and Endive
2 medium beets, trimmed, peeled and quartered
1 medium apple, peeled and quartered
1 head of curly endive, or lettuce, rinsed, dried and torn into pieces
Balsamic vinegar, or blueberry vinegar
Olive oil
1 shallot, peeled and chopped
Sea salt and freshly ground pepper
Fresh chopped parsley
Goat or Roquefort cheese, crumbled (optional)
Grate the beets and apple in a food processor, or by hand. Put into a bowl with chopped shallot, 1 TBL vinegar, and 2 ½ TBL olive oil. Mix, and let rest for 15 minutes to marinate.
Prepare the greens: right before serving whisk 1 TBL vinegar with salt and pepper to taste in a bowl. Add 2 ½ TBL olive oil in a thin stream, whisking constantly. Add the endive or lettuce and toss so that the leaves are coated with the dressing. Arrange the leaves on a serving platter. Toss the beets one more time and mound atop the lettuce, leaving the lettuce showing around the edges.
Garnish with crumbled cheese, if desired, and chopped parsley.
Serves 4 to 6
This year my row of fall carrots got a late start, so I have ordered extra from a friend. Next week I will put her large, sweet storage carrots and beets –unwashed, but with tops cut just above the root and clods of dirt brushed off—into damp wood shavings in lidded plastic tubs in my unheated cellar. Then, through the long winter, a ready supply of locally-grown, fresh vegetables is only a few steps away—at the bottom of my cellar stairs.
Carrots and beets like cold, damp storage, such as an unheated cellar. Onions, garlic, and squash want cool, dry storage—the closet of a spare bedroom on the north side of the house, or an attic, or cool entryway off the kitchen. When you start thinking about it, its not hard to come up with places where you can squirrel away winter vegetables, and you’ll be glad you did. They taste so much better than anything you can buy in the supermarket, come January.
Before canning and refrigeration, the most common method of vegetable and fruit preservation was cold storage of food in its natural state. When the first English settlers arrived in New England almost 400 years ago, they were unprepared for the harshness of our winters. The houses they built resembled those they had known in English villages—but with a difference: in the New World they needed cellars to preserve the harvest which was essential to their survival. Many of our older houses have stone-walled cellars, whose purpose originally was not to house furnaces and hot water tanks, but to store food during the winter. Now most basements are too warm for keeping food. But all is not lost if you don’t have an unheated cellar. A corner furthest from the furnace can be partitioned off to achieve the desired coldness (32 – 40 degrees). A basement window well with the light blocked can be used for mini cold storage, as can the steps of a bulkhead door. A handy piece of equipment to have is a wireless thermometer. I tuck one down cellar near the vegetables, and monitor it from the kitchen.
The beauty of storing root vegetables in damp shavings in tubs with lids is that high humidity is maintained (without having to humidify a large space) and rodents are kept out. Experts recommend that a change of air is necessary to keep the vegetables fresh, but I have found that opening the bins several times a week in the normal course of collecting food seems to do well enough. Moisten the shavings evenly before layering with the roots. The vegetables may touch but not crowd each other. Put a good layer of wood shavings between each layer of vegetable. Cardboard boxes work well, too. The wood shavings tend to dry out faster in cardboard than plastic, and will need to be refreshed with water every month or so. I have not experimented with them, but clean sand or sawdust can be substituted for wood shavings. Parsnips, turnips and kohlrabi can also be stored this way.
This year we ate our last stored carrot July 1—eight months after we put it away. It was still sweet and amazingly crisp—and it had never been refrigerated. To my mind, that is independence!
Carrots are the workhorse of winter cooking, receding somewhat into the background as the aromatic base for soups and stews. Beets, while not quite as versatile as the carrot, are delicious roasted or grated raw in salad. Both are nourishing; packed with vitamins and minerals. Studies done in France, where the carrot is revered as the savory basis of almost everything, suggest that raw carrots alleviate digestive ailments, lower blood cholesterol, and reduce the risk of lung cancer in smokers. Beets, which were developed by German gardeners in the middle ages, are so concentrated, nutritionally speaking, that many vitamins are derived from them. Beets and their tops contain substances that detoxify the liver and clean the blood. In Europe beets are used in cancer therapy.
Roasting root vegetables sweetens and caramelizes them. Large carrots often have a woody core which is best cut out before cooking. Beets bleed when cut, so if you don’t want their juices staining other foods in the dish, cook them separately or roast in the oven with skins on, and slip off the skins when cooked. (I happen to love the jewel-like stain beets impart to other root vegetables when cooked together!)
Oven Roasted Carrots and Beets
Preheat oven to 400 F.
6 medium carrots
6 medium beets
¼ cup olive oil
Salt and pepper
Wash, peel and trim the ends of carrots and beets and cut them into pieces that are roughly the same size and shape.
In a large bowl, toss the carrots and beets together with the olive oil, and season generously with salt and pepper. Spread the vegetables evenly in a baking pan in a single layer, and roast, uncovered, stirring and tossing occasionally, until the vegetables are tender, for 20 to 45 minutes.
Serves 4 to 6
Salad of Beet, Apple and Endive
2 medium beets, trimmed, peeled and quartered
1 medium apple, peeled and quartered
1 head of curly endive, or lettuce, rinsed, dried and torn into pieces
Balsamic vinegar, or blueberry vinegar
Olive oil
1 shallot, peeled and chopped
Sea salt and freshly ground pepper
Fresh chopped parsley
Goat or Roquefort cheese, crumbled (optional)
Grate the beets and apple in a food processor, or by hand. Put into a bowl with chopped shallot, 1 TBL vinegar, and 2 ½ TBL olive oil. Mix, and let rest for 15 minutes to marinate.
Prepare the greens: right before serving whisk 1 TBL vinegar with salt and pepper to taste in a bowl. Add 2 ½ TBL olive oil in a thin stream, whisking constantly. Add the endive or lettuce and toss so that the leaves are coated with the dressing. Arrange the leaves on a serving platter. Toss the beets one more time and mound atop the lettuce, leaving the lettuce showing around the edges.
Garnish with crumbled cheese, if desired, and chopped parsley.
Serves 4 to 6
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