Who doesn’t like glazed baby beets? In this recipe, baby beets are cooked in a bit of water, red wine vinegar, and thyme before they are glazed with a sauce that incorporates honey, butter, and more thyme.
Glazed Baby Beets with a Thyme Honey Butter Sauce
Who doesn’t like glazed baby beets? In this recipe, baby beets are cooked in a bit of water, red wine vinegar, and thyme before they are glazed with a sauce that incorporates honey, butter, and more thyme.
Ingredients
- 20 similarly-sized baby beets, exterior washed but skins still intact
- 2 quarts water, or enough to cover beets in pot
- ¼ cup red wine vinegar
- 30 sprigs thyme, split into two piles
- 4 Tbsp salt
- 1/4 cup honey
- 3 Tbsp water
- 8 Tbsp (1 stick) salted butter, cut into small cubes, kept cold
- Juice of ½ lemon, or more to taste
- 1/8 tsp salt, or to taste
Instructions
- Scrub beets gently under cold running water.
- Place beets in a pot and cover with 2 quarts of water.
- Add the ¼ cup red wine vinegar, 15 thyme sprigs, and salt until the water tastes salty.
- Bring the mixture to a boil.
- Reduce the heat to a gentle simmer and cook the beets for roughly 70-100 minutes, or until the beets are completely tender when poked through the center with a small paring knife or cake tester.
- *If your baby beets are different sizes, some of the bigger beets may require more cooking time relative to the smaller ones.
- When the beets are tender, turn off the heat and carefully remove the beets from the cooking liquid.
- When the beets are still very hot but just cool enough to handle without burning yourself, carefully use paper towels to remove the outer skin from each beet, trying to keep each baby beet intact.
- Trim the brown ends off of each beet, in the place where the ends of the beet greens that grow above-ground meet the beet root itself.
- When the beets are peeled and trimmed, arrange them carefully on a large serving platter while you make the thyme honey butter sauce.
- Tie the remaining 15 thyme sprigs tightly together using a small piece of kitchen string.
- Combine the ¼ cup of honey with the 3 Tbsp water and remaining 15 sprigs of thyme in a small sauce pot on the stove.
- Turn heat to medium-low and allow the honey and thyme to warm up.
- While the honey is warming, slowly fold in your cold butter cubes.
- Continue to add the butter cubes until the honey and butter emulsify together and create and glaze.
- Squeeze in some lemon juice once you have emulsified all of the butter into the warm honey thyme mixture.
- Adjust quantity of lemon to taste.
- Season the glaze with salt to taste.
- Remove the thyme sprigs from the glaze mixture.
- Carefully pour the warm glaze over the warm beets that you arranged on a serving platter earlier.
- Serve hot, as a side dish to accompany any delicious roasted meat.
Notes
You may want to wear gloves during the peeling process if you are worried about beet-stained hands.
These will keep well in the fridge for a couple of days.
These will keep well in the fridge for a couple of days.