Serves one
Music Pairing: Smile Big by The Leftover Cuties
You’ll see this isn’t much of a recipe. It’s flexible, much the way my everyday cooking habits tend to be. My work life is based on structure at the stove, recording every little detail. When I’m cooking on instinct it’s quite a freeing experience. That’s where I’d love to see everyone to get to one day. Feel free to give this a try with collard greens, too. And if you have some bacon grease lying around, trying swapping that in for some of the oil. I must remember to try this myself next time.
Green tops from one head of beets
Olive oil, few glugs
Few splashes of shoyu soy sauce
Maple syrup, to taste
Generous pinch of sea salt
Preheat your oven to 350F.
Remove the tough center ribs if they’re very thick from the beet greens (thin ones will cook down fine enough). If you’re doubling or tripling this recipe, then you might have enough ribs to pickle. I’ve never done this, but think it’s worth trying out. I’ve been meaning to do it with kale ribs for forever.
But I digress…
Now that you’ve got the beet greens all prepped, add them to a roasting pan. Add a few glugs of olive oil, enough to really coat the greens. You want them to wilt, and not crisp up like kale chips. Add the soy sauce, maple syrup, and salt. Rub it all together with your fingers.
Roast for 8 minutes, stirring halfway through cooking. These will wilt down a lot, hence one large leafy head only being enough to serve one hungry mama. Next time I can see tossing these with some cooked rice noodles, or serving over a steaming bowl of jasmine rice.