Gasping, I looked down at the shrivelled and dried beet chips and realised just how many carbohydrates I was consuming. Three medium sized beets shrunken down to no more than a meagre handful, much less than a small packet of chips, we're talking a lot of carbs in one small portion. It's easy enough now to buy dried vegetables and fruit, but making my own gives me that rosy glow of domesticity. Some people swear by a dehydrator, but I don't have one or the inclination to produce bucket loads of dried things, just a few small attempts is good enough. It's incredible how the beets diminish.
From this....
....to this.
They remind me of the snail shells I used to collect, (minus snails of course, although there was once that incident with a hermit crab...) Beautiful subtle colours and shapes, the ridges in the striped beets becoming raised and embossed but somehow, less appetizing, almost dirty looking, the candy pink stripes fading away to dark, dusky pinks and browns, like flowers wilting. This is not how they looked in the recipe I followed.
You'd think that like mushrooms, once dehydrated and shrunken, the taste would intensify. It doesn't really, (in my opinion), although the taste was the same delicious earthy sweetness you expect from a beet. As for being touted as a healthy alternative to chips, I'm not sure how much validity that holds. Everyone is so caught up in fat and saturated fat counts, they forget the carbs and sugar levels, which can be equally bad for you. I have a friend (her of the vegetarian bent), who is currently studying nutrition in college. She was surprised last week at one of the lectures about the food pyramid, to discover that fruits are in fact recommended to be consumed in extreme moderation because of the high sugar content and not freely eaten with abandon as some people think because of their vitamins and minerals. So, squeezing the life out of juicy vegetables and fruits may be a good way to preserve them, but I'm not convinced they're any better for you than a bag of sweets.
Recipe : Dried beet chips
(from Edible Vancouver)
Use as many beets as you can comfortably fit in the oven. Try to use lots of different colours. Remember they will shrink considerably.
olive oil
salt
Pre heat the oven to 300oF and peel the beets.
Slice the beets as thinly as possible using a knife or a mandolin and place in a bowl.
Pour enough oil into the bowl to just coat the beets and toss well to ensure they are coated well.
Lay the beets onto as many non stick baking sheets as you need to lay them out without touching and immediately place into the oven. (Don't let them sit around in the oil without going in the oven, they won't crisp).
Bake for about 20 minutes, reduce the heat to 225oF and continue baking for another hour or until the beets are dry and crisp.
Remove from the oven, sprinkle with salt and serve with a dip, maybe yogurt or sour cream based.
2 comments:
I think that you need to rethink your article because you are seriously putting out misinformation. To equate the naturally occuring fructose in fruits and vegetables with "sweets," a food product with added sugar, is very wrong. Mother Nature created a system that is perfectly perfect. It is our abuse of that system that wrecks havoc on every living organism, including our bodies. Fruits contain many health benefits: antioxidants, fiber, vitamins, minerals and things that science has not even yet grasped. I would seriously question a nutritionalist or a nutrition program that tells you that eating fruits is the same for our bodies as eating sweets, or one that negates the health benefits of fruit because they also contain fructose. All sugar is simply not the same. Health benefis aside, it it is also important to note that pure, unprocessed fructose, which has been provided by nature, is kind to our bodies. We are naturally designed to process that stuff. I am not referring to processed fructose or any added sweetener. Current medicine doesn't even tell diabetics to limit fruits and vegetables and studies have even shown recently that eating a diet rich in fruits and vegetables reduces the risk and occurance of diabetes. When it comes to fruits and vegetables, moderation is not necessary. If you are talking table sugar, syrups, honey, or any other artificial sweetener, that is a drastically different tale to tell. I suggest you do a bit more research on the topic. A nutritionist once told me that the best thing I could do for nutrition while on chemotherapy for cancer was to eat anything I could and wanted: candies, cookies, cake, if that's what it takes because I needed calories to put on weight... it was only the calories that counted. I did not listen to that nutritionist and am alive and 8 years out from treatment. I can be pretty certain I would not be here if I had listened to that advice No disrespect to your friend, but she's being taught the wrong thing. So, beet on, my friend. Dehydrated beets are super delicious and a wonderfully rich and healthy food choice.
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