Beet Risotto

Make some Beet Risotto and celebrate Earth Day! We can reduce the habit of throwing away delicious food! Food waste is not only suitable for our food budget but also for the earth! (This recipe has an affiliate link; if you purchase from this link, I will receive a small portion of the sale.)

Why Reduce Food Waste?

There are lots of great reasons to do it!  Did you know that 18% of the trash in landfills comes from leftover food? That equals about 40 tons of food thrown out yearly (10 billion tons of the food is left in farm fields, which are perfectly good to eat). I came across a great resource about food waste called Keeping Food Out of the Landfill from the Harvard Law & Policy Clinic

Besides wasting money, there are additional good reasons not to waste food:

• Food left in the fields can be gleaned to share with people who may be food insecure. Several groups glean food left in fields and share it with the community that needs it. One of these groups is the Society of Saint Andrews.
  
• Food waste is when food thrown in a landfill produces methane gas when it is decayed, which has 21% more warming potential than carbon dioxide gas. This gas can harm our environment. You can read more about the problems with food-producing methane here.

Prevent food waste:

Reduce. Re-use. Recycle!

1. Reduce: With careful meal planning, we can plan meals that we will need so that when we go to the grocery store, we don’t purchase excess that we may not use and that will go to waste.
   
   If this thinking ahead approach does not come naturally to you, there are a lot of great resources to help you get started! Another great way to reduce this is by purchasing minimally packaged foods so there will be less paper and plastic thrown away.
   
2. Reuse: When reusing, I think about making vegetable broth with unused vegetable scraps like potato peels, celery roots, and herb stems.
   
   However, it is also essential to find creative uses for edible portions of vegetables that we often throw away, such as carrot tops, potato peels, melon rinds, citrus peels, and apple peels. I found many delicious ways to turn some food and vegetable scraps into something tasty.

3. Recycle: Some vegetable and fruit table scraps are not edible, so a little bit must be recycled. Composting is
great way to recycle those inedible bits and pieces of fruits and vegetables.

I grew up in a rural area where we composted all organic materials to make rich, beautiful soil. When I moved to an urban area, I temporarily quit composting because there was not much composting done there. Over the years, my husband and I became more familiar with urban composting and researched the great reasons to do it, and tools to use became more widely available.

Here is an excellent website with resources and information on ways to compost, whether you live in the city or a rural area. For some people who live in apartments and do not have a place to compost, some areas have companies that come to pick up those valuable vegetable table scraps, so check those out, too! But it does have a section on indoor home composting.

https://www.gardeningknowhow.com/composting/basics/ultimate-beginners-guide-composting.htm

It seems that people either love or hate beets. After reading this blog post, I hope you will love them or eat them more often.

Many people ask: Are beets good for you?

Here are just a few ways!

Nutritional Benefits of Beets

Beets are rich in vitamins, minerals, and medicinal plant chemicals. Here are just a few of beet’s health benefits:

1. Beets and Garlic for Blood Pressure: These colorful root vegetables are rich in nitrates, which break down into nitric oxide. They promote blood flow in the body and help lower blood pressure. Combine them with garlic, and they may be even more powerful!
   
2. Are Beets Good for Inflammation? Yes, indeed! Beets have powerful anti-inflammatory properties, such as nitrates and betalain, which help fight chronic diseases and immune conditions.
   
3. Beets and Digestive Health: The fiber in beets can help with digestive health.
   
4. Beet Root and Cancer: Beets contain several anti-cancer plant chemicals such as betalain, ferulic acid, kaempferol and caffeic acid which appear to have chemo preventive activities and help disrupt the growth of cancer cells.
   Are beets really nutritious? – American Institute for Cancer Research % (aicr.org)
   
5. Beets and Brain Health: They play an essential role in brain health because they contain nitrates which help with blood flow in the brain.
   
6. Beet Nutrition: Last but not least, they are rich in copper, folate, and manganese. You can read more about the benefits of beets and their nutrients here. In addition, they contain potassium, phosphorus, magnesium, iron, and zinc. So, for those of you wondering if beets are high in iron, yes, they are!
   
7. Antioxidants in Beets: Beets’ antioxidant activity helps act as a free radical scavenger, possibly giving us an energy boost.

Different Ways to Prepare Beets

Beets can be very versatile. You can roast, grill, puree, steam, grate, and simmer them. You can add them to smoothies, desserts, salads, main dishes and soups. You can use them in a condiment. In addition, pickled beets also have health benefits.

I used arborio rice to make this creamy dish. You can learn about this rice variety here.

I wanted to share a recipe that I hope you will love. How often do we throw away the stems and even the greens when we prepare only the roots of beets? These facts inspired this Roasted Beet Risotto recipe! Adding every bit of the beet gives you more beet nutrition!

When I think about beets, I often think about spring, but in many regions, they can also be grown in the summer, fall, and even winter.

Recipe for Beet Risotto

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Roasted Beet Risotto

I used a mixture of golden and purple beets to make this beautiful risotto! I also chopped up the beet stems and greens to put in there. If you scrubbed the beets well, go ahead and roast them and use the entire beetroot in the recipe.

I peeled the beets this time and used them to dye Easter eggs, but you could even save them to make a vegetable broth. If you have young baby beets, you may not even need to peel them. I hope that you enjoy this colorful plant-based main dish!

Makes 6-8 servings.

Three tablespoons olive oil

5-6 cups vegetable broth (If you are looking for a garlic and onion-free broth, check out this link.)

1/2 cup dry white wine

1/2 cup chopped onion or green onion

1 1/2 cups Arborio rice

Two teaspoon thyme

Two dark red beets are peeled and sliced in 1/4-inch slices (I use a sandwich bag to peel and slice the beets to prevent my hands from getting “beet red.”

Two golden yellow beets peeled and sliced into 1/4-inch slices

Chopped beet greens from the greens

Chopped beet stems cut into half-inch pieces

1/2 cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees and lightly grease a cookie sheet with 1/2 tablespoon olive oil. Toss the beets and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Add the beet slices to the cookie sheet and bake for 10 minutes. Turn the beets over and bake for about five more minutes. Please remove them and allow them to cool. In a large skillet, heat 1/2 tablespoon of olive oil.

Add beet stems and onions. Saute until translucent, then add beet greens. Set the skillet off the heat. In a large saucepan, heat the broth in a large stock pot—heat one tablespoon of olive oil. Add rice and gently stir it into the olive oil. Turn down the heat to the stock pot. Add 1/2 cup wine, stirring until it evaporates.

Continue adding 1/2 cup of vegetable broth until 5 cups have been added. The broth will become creamy, and the rice kernels will soften. Add dry thyme and the rest of the broth 1/2 cup at a time. Test the taste of a granule of the rice to make sure that it is cooked. If it is too chewy, add more broth or water until the rice granules are soft. Carefully add onions, stems, and greens when the rice is finished.

Add the rice to a large bowl and the cooked beetroot to the risotto. Sprinkle with Parmesan cheese. Carefully place in bowls. You can also put the risotto in bowls and then top with beets and Parmesan cheese.

In addition to this risotto recipe, you may also like this beet and spinach salad.

Make Some Beet Risotto

Celebrate Earth Day with a colorful bowl of this Beet Risotto! I hope some of the ideas I shared to limit food waste will inspire you to try some of them. I also hope some of the health benefits that beets provide will inspire you to give them a second look and have them more often!

If you are new to my blog, welcome, and please sign up so you don’t miss a post! If you have come by again, thank you, and come back soon. You can find out a little more about me here.

Below is my composting setup. I hope it inspires you to get started, and I look forward to hearing how it goes for you!