Burned and Blackened Beet Tartare

It's vegan but doesn't make a big deal of it

Welcome back to The Recovering Line Cook.

Firstly, a big thanks to those who read, liked and commented on last week’s chicken butter adventure. A particular thanks to the new paid subscribers. Your support makes this newsletter a sustainable project for me. I’m so grateful.

Today’s recipe is for a tartare-style dish made from beets that’ve burnt to a crisp (on the outside). It’s a great starter for meat eaters and vegans alike on any Holiday menu you’re planning.

Thanks for reading,

Wil

Burned beets

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Why do I keep burning things?

I first fell in love with burning food on my honeymoon.

My Finnish wife and I had been spending a month roadtrippin’ through the eastern United States. Maybe it was the carefree, newlywed fun we were having, maybe it was the sense of freedom we felt driving through such a fascinating country and meeting wonderful people, but somewhere between Tennessee and DC something frightening happened.

We went camping by mistake.

This was despite the hurricane that had been chasing us from Florida.

The location for our ill-advised excursion was Virginia’s Peaks of Otter Campground. Being a wannabee Ron Swanson, I disregarded my wife’s suggestion we eat at the nearby lodge and opted to cook on the open fire that night.

All was going well until I cracked open the foil our potatoes had been slowly roasting in.

They were entirely black.

I’d already been sulking having built our tent inside out and was moments away from throwing those bloody potatoes into the forest.

My wife reminded me of the bears it would likely attract and I calmed down.

And then, despite my telling her they were ruined and that I was an idiot and I should give up on cooking and become a tax accountant, she started eating them. She even said they were quite nice.

I promise you, “quite nice”, from a Finn, is about as glowing praise as you can ever dream of hearing.

And she was right. Having peeled and scraped away the majority of the carbonised spud, what remained was dense, and tender, and permeated by a deep grilled flavour. It was the purest taste of outdoor cooking I’d ever eaten.

Whenever we grill or barbecue now, we always make our honeymoon campfire potatoes.

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I started working at a restaurant called Oaxen in Stockholm not long after our honeymoon. It was here that my education in burning the hell out of things continued.

On the menu was a dish called “coal-baked beetroot tartare”. We used a huge charcoal oven at Oaxen, and the beets were baked by leaving them in the red hot coals until they were even blacker than my campfire potatoes. The result was a concentrated beet flavour with a deep but delicate smoky edge.

The dish I’m sharing today is my recreation of that very delicious alternative to steak tartare that also just happens to be vegan.

For more of my adventures in burning things on purpose, you can check out:

• My Burnt Cabbage Butter recipe

• My video guide to Grilled Butter

Portrait of a line cook on his honeymoon burning potatoes

The recipe for burned beetroot tartare

The long, hard cooking of these beets does something really quite special to them. Of course the charred outer husk flavours the beet “meat”, but the texture is changed as well. The water content is significantly reduced. The beet flesh turns dense and yielding and almost creamy. A world away from the crunchiness of pickled beets. Served underneath the beet is a rich “cream” made from sunflower seeds. What you are left with is a great starter for both meat eaters and vegans at any celebration meal.

Ingredients (for 4 to 5 people as starter)

Beet tartare
1kg raw red beets
A tablespoon good quality ketchup
A tablespoon finely chopped pickled onion (see recipe here)

Sunflower seed “cream”
100g sunflower seeds
80ml water
A tablespoon of pickled onion liquid
A good pinch of salt
A good pinch of sugar

To garnish
2 tablespoons of sunflower seeds
2 teaspoons of apple cider vinegar
1/2 teaspoon fine salt
Pickled onions
Herbs (Your choice of chives/dill/parsley. I used preserved dill flowers in the below picture)

Method

Things kick off at least the day before you want to eat this I’m afraid. But it’s a simple job. Turn your oven as hot as it goes. I tested this at 250°c/480°f. The idea is to really burn your beets. Black on the outside and totally soft on the inside. This takes about 2 hours in my oven at 250°c.

Once you have achieved this, take them out and let them cool. Wrap them individually in plastic wrap and leave them in the fridge overnight. The point of this is to really let that charred flavour absorb into the beet flesh. It just isn’t the same if you miss out this step.

Next is to make the sunflower seed cream. Boil some water and cover the 100g of seeds with it. Leave this to sit for an hour. This helps create a smoother cream. After it’s been sitting for that time, drain and put into a small food processor with the 80ml of water, the pickle liquid, and salt/sugar. Blitz this for at least a minute until entirely smooth. It will be quite thick, like cream cheese. Keep in the fridge for later.

Now take your beets that have been marinading in their own skins and start scraping off the burn. After that long cook and the peeling, you should be left with around 500g of beets. It really will have cooked down, but the intense flavour is your reward for loss of yield. Chop this down by hand finely. Or, of course, use the food processor, but be careful to keep some texture and not process it too finely. Then season your beets with salt, pepper, the onions, and ketchup.

The final step is to toast your 2 tablespoons of seeds in a pan until starting to brown. At this stage add the salt and vinegar and mix until the salt dissolves and vinegar evaporates. Keep it on the heat until seeds dry out again. Put them aside in a bowl.

To serve, place a generous spoon of the rich sunflower seed cream on the bottom of the plate and casually top with seasoned beetroot. Garnish this with pickled onion, your choice of herbs, and those salty, vinegary toasted seeds.

If you’re classy, this is nice served with toasted bread or pita. If you’re like me you might enjoy it more with salted potato chips.

For a simpler vegetarian alternative, substitute the sunflower seed cream for a rich cultured cream like creme fraiche or full fat sour cream.

Burned beetroot tartare

As ever my friends, thanks for being here. Whether you’re a free or paid subscriber, it means so much to me you are reading. Any support you can give by clicking the heart button below or sharing really helps.

Also, since I seem to have a thing for burning things, do you have any recipes involving burning I should know about? I’m all ears…

See you next week,

Wil