“The beet is the most intense of vegetables.  Beets are deadly serious.”- Tom Robbins.

Beets have a inherently woodsy taste to them.  I’ve had them in desserts as well as really spicy dishes, it can be very adaptive.  I happen to love this vegetable.  A simple soup can warm you up when you are just not feeling too good.  My earliest memories of this vegetable was good, in fact great..so I’ve built on it’s repertoire.

This is also similar to rasam (Indian style thin tamarind and lentil soup), but has a very distinct flavor which comes from this root vegetable.  I just drank it up as soup, but you could accompany this with rice or plain old bread on the side.

BEETS SOUP/ RASAM

Ingredients:

1 large beetroot cup up in quarters
3 tbsp red lentils
1/2 red onion roughly chopped
1 tomato roughly chopped
1″ ginger
3 green chillies
1 tsp cumin seeds
2 tsp whole pepper
3 sprigs coriander/
1 sprig mint leaves
1 tsp salt
1 tsp oil
1 tsp mustard seeds and 1/2 tsp asafoetida for tempering
Tortilla chips for garnishing and some lemon juice.

Method:

1.  In a large crock pot, add some oil.  Add onion, beets, lentils,tomato, ginger,green chillies, cumin seeds,pepper, coriander and mint leaves with 3 cups of vegetable stock or water.
2.  Cover and let simmer for 40 minutes,check after 30 minutes or every now and then to see if there is enough water.  There has to be minimum 3 cups once it’s all cooked up. Let cool.
3.  Mash it well and strain with a strainer  to a smooth consistency.
4.  In a small tempering vessel, add little oil and add mustard seeds and asafoetida and add it to the soup(this step is completely optional)
ENJOY with a good crusty Bread/ plain rice/ or drink up plain.