We found some lovely beets at the Truro Farmers Market and thought what better vegetable to use for our Valentine’s Day recipe post! The colours are beautiful, they make a great side kick to anything and we used the Instant Pot – so you can free up your night for other things … 😉 Beets are great on their own just cooked with some lovely aromatics. But here we created a yogurt sauce to compliment them using our ‘Red Rub’ spice blend and topped it with some vibrant herb and crunchy seeds.
Start by making your yogurt sauce. In a bowl, mix together the yogurt, 2.5 tbsp orange juice, the Red Rub and salt to taste. Allow those flavours to mingle in the fridge while you prepare your beets.
Scrub down the beets with warm water to remove any dirt.
Place your steam basket in the bottom of the Instant Pot and place your beets, 2 strips of orange peel, the rosemary and 1.5 cups of water in the pot. Cover the Instant Pot, close the valve and pressure cook on high for 30 minutes. Release manually and test if the beets are cooked by poking the biggest one with a fork. You should be able to easily insert the fork, if it needs more time, pressure cook for another 5 minutes and repeat if needed until ready.
Remove the beets from the pot and allow to cool just until you can safely handle them. If you let them cool too long, it gets harder to peel so toughen up those kitchen hand! Using a paper towel, rub the skin off. Cut off any bad looking ends and half the smaller ones and quarter the bigger ones.
On a fancy plate (because it’s our Valentines Day beets and they need to look special!) lay down a good helping of the sauce. You may have extra left over, use for fresh veggie tray or even a creamy stir fry sauce.
Arrange your beets and top with parsley, pumpkin seeds and if desired, a lovely swirl of honey!
