Another Use for a Beet Bumper Crop

We planted three varieties of beets this past fall: Detroit Red, Bull's Blood and Chioggia.  Chioggia is an Italian beet that is white with red stripes and resembles a starlight mint when cut.  We had such a bountiful harvest this year, we don't know what to do with them all.  We've given some away.  We've eaten roasted beets on the regular now for months.  We have a bunch of pickled beets in pint jars in the pantry.  I had a work colleague about 10 years ago who was a missionary in Ukraine, and she shared a recipe with us for Borscht that she got when over there.  That's a good use for beets, too.  

Meet the beets.  The one on your left is the Detroit Red beet and the one on the right is the Chioggia.  The bull's blood beet was unavailable for the photo shoot.

With the main ingredients waiting in the wings, let's get started with today's novel way to use up a bumper crop of beets.  We haven't made this in a few years.  We're making Beet Kvass.  This beverage originated in what is now modern-day Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus.  We're using a recipe from the Nourishing Traditions Cookbook by Sally Fallon.

So what is beet kvass, you might ask?  It is a healthy tonic that is fermented.  It helps the liver to detoxify your blood.  It is packed with probiotics and aids in your body's digestive process.  So let's make a batch!  It's easy like Sunday morning.

First get three good sized beets and cut them up into chunks.  Put them in a half-gallon Mason jar.  Pour a quarter cup of whey over the beets in the jar.  Add one tablespoon of sea salt to the jar.  Finally, fill the jar with filtered water and stir thoroughly.  Cover the jar and sit at room temperature for 2 days and then place in the refrigerator.

This is what our beet kvass looks like.  It is not as red in coloration as prior batches have been because we used a chioggia beet along with the red beets to make it, but it still has a nice red hue to it.  

I poured myself the first glass this afternoon.  Good stuff!  You're supposed to have 4 ounces of this each day.

Another good way to make use of a great beet harvest.  But wait!  I just thought of another that we haven't thought about yet this year: Making Red Velvet Cake with beets!  That's next on the agenda.

Making Beet Kvass with the last of the Bull's Blood Beets

I harvested the last of the Bull’s Blood Beets and we roasted them in the oven.  Tricia reserved 3 of the fattest beets to make a beverage that we hadn’t made in a while – Beet Kvass.  Kvass is a word that means “leaven” or “fermented” and has been around since the Middle Ages. THIS ARTICLE talks a bit more about the history of kvass, where it originated, and how it is made.

Kvass is a very popular drink in Russia and Eastern European countries.  I found it interesting that when western soft drinks reduced the consumption of kvass in Russia, they began marketing it as a patriotic alternative to colas and cola sales fell dramatically.  In response to this loss of market share, Coca-Cola introduced its own brand of kvass.

With the last of the Bull’s Blood Beets, we decided to make beet kvass.  It is a very healthy lacto-fermented drink and we use the recipe from Sally Fallon in the Nourishing Traditions cook book.  Here’s what the cookbook says about the nutritive benefits of beet kvass:

“This drink is valuable for its medicinal qualities and as a digestive aid.  Beets are just loaded with nutrients.  One 4-ounce glass, morning and night, is an excellent blood tonic, cleanses the liver and is a good treatment for kidney stones and other ailments.”  This beverage is non-alcoholic, but the directions in the recipe state that you should chop and not grate the beets as grated beets release too much liquid and will cause it to ferment too quickly.  That will produce alcohol rather than lactic acid.

To make Beet Kvass, you’ll need some fresh picked beets – 3 of them to be exact.

Fresh Beets

We peel them with a potato peeler...

Beet Pulp

And then chop up into pieces of peeled beets.  The beet pulp can be composted or fed to the cows or chickens.

Chop in half and then just cut up into smaller pieces

The beautiful red color stains your fingers and cutting board!

Caught 'red-handed'

Then you simply place your chopped up beets, ¼ cup whey* and 2 teaspoons kosher salt into a half gallon mason jar and add filtered water to fill the container.

*Whey is a by-product when making yogurt or kefir when the milk separates into curds and whey after standing at room temperature for 1-2 days.  Whey is a good preservative.

Back to the recipe, stir the ingredients well and screw the lid on tightly and then keep out at room temperature for 2 days and then transfer to the refrigerator.  The beets immediately turn the liquid bright red and bubbles cover the neck of the jar, letting you know that it is fermenting.

Half-Gallon of Beet Kvass

When you are finished drinking the half gallon of beet kvass, you can make another batch by refilling the jar with water and sitting at room temperature for 2 more days.  How does it taste, you ask?  Well, it is salty, tangy and bubbly, with a hint of sweetness from the beets.  I won’t say it is delicious, although Tricia really likes it, but it is good and knowing that it is healthy for you makes it easy to drink 4 ounces in the morning and 4 ounces at night until it is gone. 

  

Making Beet Kvass

We're wrapping up our beet theme today with an interesting recipe that I promised last night.  We're making a beverage called Beet Kvass.  It is a fermented beverage that is popular in Russia and Ukraine.  Now, I'm not used to seeing the consonants, 'k' and 'v' used together, so I was guessing that this recipe is from another culture and after looking on Wikipedia, that assumption is correct.  Kvass is an old Slavic word that means, 'yeast' or 'leaven.'

It all starts off on the row of beets.  After you've grown some nice beets, pull them out of the ground and bring them inside.

Bull's Blood Beets

We use a recipe from Sally Fallon's Nourishing Traditions Cookbook.  Sally Fallon is associated with the Weston A. Price Foundation, a foundation we belong to whose mission is "to restore nutrient-dense foods to the American diet through education, research, and activism."

First you want to peel and chop up 3 or 4 medium beets.  You don't want to shred them - just chop them into some nice sized chunks.  Beets are a boring, drab looking root vegetable, but when you peel them and cut into them, they come alive with a vivid red color!

Chopping up the beets

Clean up a half gallon sized Mason jar and put your cut up beets into it.

The only ingredients you need besides beets are 1/4 cup whey and 2 teaspoons of sea salt.  We had just made some kefir, so we had plenty of whey.  Add the whey and the sea salt to your chopped beets in the jar.  

Beets, whey, and salt

Then add filtered water to fill the jar.

Adding filtered water

Stir well and then put the cap on securely.  Give it a good shake and leave on the counter at room temperature for 2 days.  After 2 days move it to the refrigerator.  The neat thing about this recipe is that when you have drunk almost all of the liquid you can fill it back up with water and do it again.

At room temperature for 2 days

According to the Nourishing Traditions Cookbook: "This drink is valuable for its medicinal qualities and as a digestive aid.  Beets are just loaded with nutrients.  One 4-ounce glass, morning and night, is an excellent blood tonic, promotes regularity, aids digestion, alkalizes the blood, cleanses the liver and is a good treatment for kidney stones and other ailments.  Beet kvass may also be used in place of vinegar in salad dressings and as an addition to soups."

I don't know how to adequately describe the taste to you.  The first time we made it I was a little suspicious of it because we were new to lacto-fermentation and I was afraid that it was going to kill me.  Well, I'm still here!  A cup of cold beet kvass is salty, slightly sour, but is refreshing and makes you feel better.  And it doesn't kill you. Enjoy a cup of beet kvass today!