February Food Festival: Beets

Each month, we celebrate a Food Festival highlighting one of our favorite seasonal ingredients. We’ll feature this ingredient across our menus and share some tips, tricks, and nutritional facts about the ingredient.

This month, we celebrate beets. Check out our video below to learn more about beets and why we love them from root to leaf!

Video Description: Woman in pink long-sleeved sweater stands in kitchen. In front of her is a bunch of red beets with leaves intact.

Transcript:

Hi I'm Emilia, registered dietitian nutritionist and program director for Embrace Wellness. Today I'd love to share with you some facts about beets, our seasonal festival ingredient and one of my favorite root vegetables.

Beets are rich in phytochemicals, biologically active compounds found only in plant foods. Not only do phytochemicals give plants their bright colors and flavors, but they also have antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties. Betanin is one of the most powerful phytochemicals in beets.

Beets come in many different varieties: red beets are the most common but you'll also see golden, white, pink, purple and striped. Seeing different colors in beets means a range of phytochemicals.

Beets are good for your heart. They contain nitrate which your body converts to nitric oxide which relaxes blood vessels and increases blood flow. Eating nitrate-rich vegetables may benefit heart health.

Don't toss the beet greens which can be prepared in similar ways to other leafy greens -- and they taste sweeter, too! Beet greens are a great source of vitamins A, C, and K. Prepare beet greens with a source of heart healthy fat like olive oil, because vitamins A and K are fat soluble vitamins that are best absorbed along with fat.

Finally, beets are typically harvested from June through November and are available from storage from December through February.

Enjoy beets prepared in a variety of ways by our Great Performances chefs this season.