I love cooked beets, don’t you? They are great by themselves or mixed with other vegetables. I love them on sandwiches and with pasta. They add a sweet flavor that compliments many side dishes.
What I don’t like about beets is the amount of time it takes to cook them. Depending on the size it can take an hour or more to boil them on the stove. Hefting a big heavy pot of water is difficult for arthritic hands. I don’t attempts beets very often for that reason.
Evidently, someone else thought they were a pain in the butt to cook, too. My sister found these steamed and peeled baby beets at Trader Joe’s a few weeks ago. The box was about $2.
The baby beets are vacuum sealed in a plastic pouch. Looks like something marketed to vampires if you ask me.
This is a product of France distributed by Trader Joe’s. According to the product information on the box, the only thing in this package is baby beets. There are no artificial colors, flavors, seasonings, or preservatives. It always surprises me when there are no additives. This is a pleasant surprise!
I will warn you that there is plenty of juice in the pouch. Be careful where and how you open it. I wasn’t paying attention and I ended up with beet juice all over the counter. After I cleaned up the mess, I dumped the beets in a bowl. As you can see they is a lot of liquid in the bowl juicy and sizable. I was expecting smaller for baby beets.
How were the beets? They were juicy, sweet, and tender. The texture was perfect. They could be cut with a knife and fork very easily but they weren’t mushy. These are not the same as canned beets. These look and taste like real beets.
The flavor was as you would expect it. Since there is no seasoning added, they taste just like beets you boiled yourself.
Because of the size, I was able to cut these into chunks. They were in the fridge four days. I pretty much finished them up at that point.
$2 doesn’t seem that expensive. For the convenience, it might be worth the price. The box does not have to be refrigerated, so these could be kept on hand for future meals.
Ready to jump into veganism but aren’t sure where to start? Check out these cookbooks!
Good idea! I like the idea of buying vegetables that can be safely kept in the freezer, canned or boxed until I want to eat them. I’m a single person without a family to cook for – and one of my big problems (!) believe it or not, is that friends give me more fresh vegetables than I can reasonably use, and some of them go bad. I’m frequently having to throw veggies away because I can’t get around to consuming them. I find that disturbing and distressing. Well, you didn’t say these beets were frozen, so I’m guessing this package keeps them safe to eat, similar to being canned?
Linda, I also cook for one and have similar problems. I hate throwing food away, so I attempt to cook whatever I have and freeze foods when that’s an option.
These beets came vacuumed sealed. They can be kept in the pantry until you’re ready to use them. I was a little skeptical. They are nothing like the canned beets. They taste very much like they’ve been freshly boiled.
I have buying these beet for quite awhile, but they don’t last long in the frig, just a few days and I start to see white stops on them, so I end up throwing some away. I cook for one so this is convenient, but I think I will stop buying them, if they just last a few days. I also buy and cook beets from whole foods and seem to do better this way.