Herby White Bean + Beet Salad

Welcome to our show, Feel Good Food, where we make snacks, treats, and meals that taste good but also make you feel good. I'm Max, I'm Lydia, and today we were making an herby white bean and beet salad. This is the ultimate recovery meal. I was a college athlete and I swear I lived on beets, cabbage juice, that's a whole other story, and ice baths. Those were the things that that healed me, so whenever I eat beets I really do feel like I'm being nourished, and the truth is, the honest truth, is that I used to hate beets. Yeah, because I thought they tasted like ground, like earth, you know what I mean? They're really earthy. They're very earthy, but that was before I learned how to how to yossify beets, because there is a way, and we're gonna do it today, and if you yourself are watching this and you're thinking of skipping this episode because you don't like beets, stop. Because we're gonna show you a way to cook beets that's gonna transform your world. Yeah, I think it's the perfect way to cook beets. Do you think I'm promising too much? No, you promised just the right amount. Okay, let's get into it. Alright, so the first thing you want to do is just trim up your beets so that we take up less room in the pot. You can save your beet greens for a salad or cooking them down into a stew or something. I also love using my beet greens in a smoothie. You just want to make sure you wash them really well, but beet greens, if you can come up with a cool way to use them, you don't need to throw them out, and they're so beautiful. Like, you look at this and you know that's healthy. Tell us in the comments what you do with your beet greens, because I'm sure there's so many things you could do that we're not even mentioning here. For this recipe, you're gonna want three medium-sized beets. I would say these are kind of like, this one's for sure medium, but this one teetering on the edge of large. Yeah, this one's very large. I'd say getting big beets is nice because then you get bang for your buck, but they will take a lot longer. So if you've got all day to make this recipe, this is probably like a 40 to 50 minute beet, whereas these are more like 25 to 30 probably. So you know, you save yourself some time and you could fit more in the pot, which is nice. Let's get them in the pot. Yeah. We're using this beautiful light pink pot. Your favorite color? One of them. Remember earlier when I talked about yossifying your beets? This is that. What are we gonna do, chef? We're really gonna flavor pack these beets because there's two ways to cook your beets, or there are many ways, but the two common ways are roasting in the oven or cooking them on the stove in the low simmer and some water. But we're gonna add a lot of flavor by adding some orange zest, some lemon zest, some orange juice, some lemon juice, some cinnamon, a bunch of stuff. A splash of vinegar. When you roast your beets, you do get a sweeter, richer flavor because all of those beet juices stay within the beet. So a lot of people prefer roasting because it's faster and like I said, you get that rich flavor. But you forgo, when you roast your beets, the opportunity to infuse it with all of these citrus flavors that we're doing here and the cinnamon stick. So for this recipe, the citrus infusion is really, really nice. So that's why we're choosing to boil. And then don't forget your cinnamon stick. This, for me, is like really nostalgic. It's just such a good flavor combination. It really is. Because it's like this warm spice with this really earthy tone beet flavor. I feel like if you were raised eating beets, like you were conditioned to enjoy that taste. But I feel like my parents didn't really, I didn't really eat a lot of beets growing up. And so it's become an acquired taste and now I genuinely enjoy them. But I think your palate does change as you get older, like what foods you enjoy. And the more you eat and the more different food you eat, your palate really adjusts and you can really like nurture and grow. Okay, so the next thing we're gonna do is add in some salt. It can definitely be a quite a generous pinch of salt because their beets are rather large. Lydia is just picking out. I got a couple seeds. Chef, do you have your tweezers? The tweezers are coming into play later, but very helpful right now. Operation! Yes, Operation was like one of my favorite games as a kid. But I was kind of bad at it. So I knew then that I was not going to be a doctor. Okay, so we're gonna salt this up quite generously. I'd say like two pinches or one very large pinch. Because you're gonna add a lot of water in here and that is gonna dilute the salt. And then we are going to add in our water. And kind of depending on the pot you're working with will depend on how much water you put in. Because you want it to be pretty full just covered. And then you're gonna simmer these for, depending on the size of the beet, about 30 minutes. Probably a little bit more water we need. Yeah. So I'm gonna add a splash of vinegar to these beets while they cook as well because that's gonna season them even more deeply. And that's gonna be a really nice touch when you're eating this beet. It's not necessarily the vinaigrette that's gonna be giving all the acidity, but there'll be some acidity inside the beet. And I think it'll help break down the beet itself. And now we're gonna get this stove going. We're gonna leave this uncovered so you know when it comes to a boil you can bring it down to a low simmer and then it'll cook for about 45 minutes. So definitely when you're cooking any root vegetables or anything that's a really dense vegetable it's good to start it either in cold water or cook it really on a low temperature. So it doesn't really quickly cook the outside and then the interior is still undercooked. Okay let's get started on the vinaigrettes. There are two vinaigrettes in this recipe. A grapefruit vinaigrette which is for the beets and then a really delicious cumin vinaigrette which is for the Great Northern beans. So let's start with the grapefruit vinaigrette. Let's do it. So we have our grapefruit. I always roll my citrus before I cut into it just to loosen all that juice up so that when I do squeeze it it's it's super juicy. And I'm gonna cut it down the middle. Cutting grapefruit this way always reminds me of the way my mom she would cook broiled grapefruit for my brother and I in the mornings. I specifically remember it on snow days like wintry days with brown sugar broiled in the oven. It was so good. Did your mom ever do that? Never with the sugar but I always had grapefruit in the mornings. Either like a bowl of fruit or grapefruit was the way I started my day. Honestly I feel like one of the reasons why I never really outgrew my sweet tooth is because when I started rowing competitively and then later running so much of endurance sports require you to eat like goos and honestly like when I whenever I run a marathon I pack my like leggings and my backpack with literal candy and it that it really helps you it helps you get through any sort of long endurance effort. Yeah the sugars really give you a boost of energy. Yeah so I don't have like a negative association with candy I'm like oh I need it. No I feel you I feel like Lydia got me into running I was never a runner and ever since I started running it's like I have this craving for sugar because I would use it during my run yeah to give me that little energy I needed and it's like you burn it off so quickly but then you know post run I'm like oh man I could really use like an ice cream. So in this vinaigrette we're gonna have some olive oil, salt, champagne vinegar, and that grapefruit juice. How does it taste Chef? Super good. Yeah. Grapefruit is so good. We're gonna move on to the next vinaigrette so we'll just put this aside and the beets are still going they haven't come up to a full boil yet so we're just gonna let that keep going and then once it does we're gonna turn that down. We interrupt this episode of feel good food to bring you a message from our sponsor Boursin cheese. I have been a huge fan of Boursin ever since I was a little kid it is the key ingredient to my favorite four ingredient sandwich recipe which is Boursin cheese, strawberry jam, turkey slices, and bread. That's it. It is so simple and so delicious you have to try it at home. Boursin has been our go-to cheese for its creamy texture and rich flavor. We are always looking for ways to step up our cooking game especially around the holidays we're gonna be entertaining. Boursin is the perfect addition to any holiday recipe whether it be a festive cheese board or a rich and creamy mac and cheese. Make something extraordinary with Boursin cheese. You can find our favorite the garlic and fine herb flavor plus many more at your local grocer or at Boursin.com. All right so now we are grabbing our ingredients for the cumin vinaigrette and we have a lemon, some cumin which we're about to toast, garlic, and a little bit of honey. I'm gonna toast the cumin in this small saucepan and we have a bowl that's obviously much bigger than just this little bit of vinaigrette we're gonna make but it's gonna be great because then we'll toss the beans in here and it will be the perfect size. So I'm just going to microplane the garlic in here and microplaning is a great way for any dressing if you're using garlic to get it small enough that it really like emulsifies in the whole vinaigrette. So for toasting this cumin you're really going to know when it's ready when it deepens in color and when you're getting a pretty strong aroma coming off the stovetop. And Max has just beautifully. Look how beautiful it's you know look at the pace so it's basically mincing to the maximum and that way it really like spreads out evenly throughout this vinaigrette. So now I'm just gonna take this spoon and get my honey in there as well. Sometimes honey can be kind of hard to like emulsify perfectly into a vinaigrette if it's room temperature rather cold. So one thing is just like really whisking or moving around your vinaigrette really helps dilute it nicely. So our beets have been brought to a boil look at the color of that water is already deepening to this beautiful red it's gonna get even darker throughout the cooking process. I'm gonna bring that down to a low heat so it gets to a simmer and then once it starts simmering I'm gonna cover it and that will start kind of the steaming process. That's pretty good. It looks beautiful. Yeah. So we're just gonna go in with this whole lemon catching this is a really seedy one so I'm gonna catch all these seeds. So this is gonna be a really bright vinaigrette and since beans are you know rather fatty and rich it's super nice to have a lot of acid in this vinaigrette. Along with the garlic it's got a lot of bite to it. The cumin will help mellow that out but also like really bring a lot of flavor to the forefront and this is something you can use on a lot of dishes and soups and salads you know it's really a great base vinaigrette. Yeah. For anything. It's really great. I think the cumin is just about there so I'm gonna turn off the heat. I'm gonna use this beautiful mortar and pestle to grind up this now toasted cumin into a powder. I still want to leave a little bit of chunkiness because it's really nice to have those those bigger bites of cumin in there. You know sometimes the mortar and pestle does give the sound of like nails on a chalkboard. I don't know if you hear that every now and then. I don't get that. I find it really satisfying like the crunch of the of the seed under my. Strength of your arm. Is this the mortar or is this the pestle? That's the pestle. It's the pestle. This is the bowl is the mortar. Okay so I got this vinaigrette the base of it ready to go. I'm just going to add some salt and then some oil. This is looking like a pretty good consistency. There's still little pieces of cumin that haven't been crushed up completely but it is mostly powder. Yeah and if you're wondering why not to use maybe just pre-ground cumin because it's gonna be way harder to toast unless you want to do it in your oven and then you don't get those chunky bits like we were just talking about. Beautiful brown color. Yeah this recipe really does hinge on the vinaigrettes. Like I said there's two of these this being the second one we've made so far and those really bring to life and highlight the other core ingredients which is obviously the beets and then the beans. This will marinate the beans really nicely and they're gonna absorb a lot of this flavor. It's good to get these marination processes going as early as possible. Cumin goes super well with root vegetables. Actually for my final exam at cookery school one of the side dishes I had to make was a carrot salad with nigella seeds and a cumin vinaigrette. I don't even really know what nigella seeds are they just gave them to me and I was like all right sprinkle them on but they're like little dark seeds. They kind of look like poppy seeds. But anyway the cumin vinaigrette went so well with carrots and I feel like I in my head and and in reality carrots and beets are in a similar league so makes sense that they hit with both. So for this recipe we're using great northern beans. Personally I am partial to the brand Randall beans. I wonder why. My parents own this company. A bean baby. And they're constantly shipping me beans but I swear and I'm not just saying this I am a bean nepo baby. These beans actually taste really good and we're gonna rinse them and then put them in the beautiful cumin vinaigrette. It better pop because if it doesn't pop that means you need to throw the jar out. That was a good pop. It's better than champagne. So great northern beans are a little bit more of a soft beans. They're more prone to breaking in the can or the jar. Chickpeas for example are super firm and kind of more resilient so you won't see the same breakage but I love the sweetness of great northern beans and it goes really nicely. They're a little more mellow and I feel like they go nicely with the strong flavors of the cumin in this recipe and then the beets and they offer kind of like the perfect backdrop to these other strong characters. So let's get these into the bowl and get them marinating. I'd say beans are like a major go-to food for me especially you know like you in college. I ate beans all the time. I mean they would like fill you up they're full of protein they're really good for you and they're really inexpensive. They're also such a great source of nutrients and protein that aren't obviously it's plant-based so beans are just kind of this magical food. So we're just gonna take a quick peek at our beautiful beets. Wow I just feel like I entered like a bougie spa. That smells so good. Yeah it's like mulled wine, mulled cider. It does smell like mulled wine. It's like that cinnamon and citrus really really intense and beautiful flavors and color. So I think the beets should be just about ready but we have a special tool to check. Cake tester. This is probably one of my favorite kitchen tools. Really versatile, very simple. This is really helpful because it tells you how cooked something is and you can really feel by just resistance and then you can use it for temperature as well. For this purpose you know you can really press it in and you can see how easily that went in and I would say these are definitely done. So let's get these beets out of this hot water and we're gonna want to peel them but first let's get them out so that they can start cooling off a little bit. So this is where if you have gloves in your home I would recommend wearing them but if you just use your fingers gently and rub your finger along here it should start to come off or if you have a little paring knife you can also use a paring knife to scrape. Okay while Max is finishing up the peeling I'm gonna get into the slicing of the beets. We're gonna half and then quarter them. So my idea for the plating of this dish and the slicing of these beets specifically is to go really thin, as thin as you can with your slices and then I'm gonna try to shingle them over the dish and I think that's gonna look really beautiful. If you recreate this dish or any of our dishes and plate it in a beautiful or an ugly way, tag us. I'll definitely repost. So grab this vinaigrette bowl and we're gonna start marinating these beets and we'll continue to cut the rest. Okay we are ready to plate. We have our labneh which Max is about to put a dollop of on each of these plates. We have our beans that have been marinating in that beautiful cumin vinaigrette. We have our beets that are marinating in the beautiful grapefruit vinaigrette and then the herbs which I'm about to fold into the beets. It all kind of comes together at the very end here but Max you want to get started on the labneh? Yeah I'll start the plating right here. Okay perfect yeah. Funny enough labneh is one of those things that I feel like I didn't really get exposed to until I think I was in college and you know it's very similar to yogurt. I think it's just the amount of liquid that's strained out of the dairy itself. I'm gonna tear some of this parsley. I don't think I want the full leaf going in because it's kind of you know parsley can be quite, look at that's a big leaf of parsley. So there's actually kind of three mini leaves in here so I'm gonna tear and put it in. And what are you doing with the labneh right now? I just spread it around the plate. I think I will just do a little bit of salt just to layer the seasoning a little bit and then we're gonna get those nice seasoned beans right on top. So I just want to point out that the reason I waited until the very end to fold these herbs in is because I don't want the herbs to wilt in the liquid and that's that's really more so for aesthetic reasons. Yeah. But I want it to look vibrant and green those little herb moments to be vibrant and green. I have a vision for this dish and it's a shingled beet layer over all these beans which actually now that I see how big this plate is it's gonna be a lot of shingling. But I'm gonna do it fast and do it right and I think it's gonna look great. I think honestly the inspiration mostly just came from like my experience working in kitchens but I don't know like honestly like social media Instagram TikTok stuff like that you see so many people's food and everyone has their own little special thing. I think I'm just gonna do a little oil and black pepper to finish. So here's the finished dish. Gorgeous. You know so the vision for eating this is kind of funny because you want to get everything a bite of everything. You do. So I was gonna just cut through like a steak almost. Oh wow. You know like I don't want to mess up the beautiful artistry. I'm just gonna pick mine up. Mmm I know I always say that what we make is so good that's because we're making really good food. The cumin and the labneh work really well together because you get that punchiness from the garlic and the lemon and then the labneh really like settles all of those flavors and the beets have that like nice acidity from the vinegar we put in there. They have that sweetness the little bit of cinnamon flavor just like all really works perfectly together. Thanks for joining us on this episode of Feel Good Food. You can find this recipe on Food 52 and we'll see you next time.