At first glance, the process of cooking vegetables seems to be very simple. But for this, you will need knowledge of some secrets and subtleties - then it will turn out to cook vegetables in such a way that both vitamins and taste are preserved in them as much as possible.
When cooking beets for salads, you must try to make them not only tasty, but also go well with other vegetables, give the dish color, and the vitamins remain intact.
How to boil beets
It is necessary to lay the roots so that the water only slightly covers the vegetables, and from time to time it must be topped up.
When boiling, cover the beets with a lid and set a small fire. In this case, it is better to avoid boiling. There is no unambiguous opinion about the duration of cooking - it will depend both on the size of the root crop and on the degree of hardness that should be obtained as a result. On average, the process takes 40-60 minutes.
The readiness of the beets is checked by piercing it with a toothpick or knife. Beets are considered finished if their flesh easily slides over the surface of the knife. But you should not do this too often - if the root crop is strongly pounded, a lot of juice will flow out of it, and this leads to a loss of brightness and loss of vitamins.
You should not salt the water - firstly, it is useless, and secondly, this can only spoil the taste of beets.
Little beetroot tricks
So that the beets do not lose color during the cooking process, the water after boiling can be sweetened or acidified - a couple of tablespoons of sugar or table vinegar for three liters of water without vegetables.
There are no special rules regarding the material used for cooking beets. The only thing that should be taken into account is that the beet broth turns out to be coloring, very saturated, so you should not use such dishes that will be difficult to wash. It is not recommended to cook beets in metal dishes. In terms of volume, it is necessary to choose dishes that are not very large so that the unoccupied volume is as small as possible. Ideally, when there is a distance of two to three centimeters from the water to the lid.
You can put a crust of bread in a saucepan while cooking - this way you get rid of the smell of boiled beets, which is inevitably present at this time and not everyone likes.
To make the beets easy to peel, after the end of cooking, it is better to rinse or cool it, for which it should be immersed in cold water for 8-10 minutes. You should not cook beets in the same bowl with other vegetables for salad - with separate cooking, the color of the root vegetable remains brighter. To prevent the beets from staining other vegetables with their juice, they must be cut and mixed in a separate bowl with the addition of sunflower oil. The oil creates a thin film on the surface and retains the juice.
