Caramelized Beets With Orange-Saffron Yogurt Recipe (2024)

I'm a little puzzled by the 1 cup plus 1 tablespoon of oil; at the end, there is one tablespoon used to put in with the beets after cooking and then one "remaining" tablespoon of oil to saute the almonds. What happened to the nearly 1 cup of oil left in the baking pan? Or is that all absorbed by the beets, except precisely one tablespoon left? Please clarify. Surely you don't need a cup of oil plus 7 tbsp of butter to bake the beets with?

The amount of oil and butter to roast the beets is either a typo, or outrageous. I used beets from my garden that I had in the freezer, they had been roasted, peeled and then vacuum-sealed. I let them defrost, then slowly fried them in olive oil (2 to 3 tbs for 1 pound beets) in a cast iron pan, uncovered, alongside the unpeeled garlic. After about 30 minutes with occasional stirring, the beets were nicely caramelized and the garlic was very soft. ItWill make that again, it was delicious.

Literally everyone in the Middle East disagrees.

This dish is definitely a savory dish. We had it as a main course for dinner. The flavored yogurt sauce is the more savory part of the flavors. Which in contrast to the fresh roasted beets, makes them even sweeter than one would normally consider beets to taste. We love fresh beets, buy them when we find them here at the local farmer's market in Hilo, Hawaii. This is a great way to feature their flavors in a vegetarian main course (not vegan) on a warm spring night here in the tropics.

I tried "lacing" the beets into a bowl, but found that "placing" them worked better...

Happened to have beets I bought yesterday so did this very dish this morning and it is nothing short of wonderful. No one in my family will eat beets, beats me why, but I love them and this is a whole new way for me to appreciate them. Cooking for only one,it was a bit of a challenge to size the recipe down but I did and have enough for a repeat performance.This is definitely a keeper. Thank you Sam, and thank you Yotem, who's three books I have and cherish, read like favorite novels.

With some adaptations, this recipe was a big hit for a dinner party. I added more saffron, lemon juice, and juice of a small orange, along with more orange and lemon zest to the yogurt sauce to make it more flavorful and give it more color. With small to medium size beets, I had to cook them much longer. I ended up with about 1 cup of oil and butter from the baking dish that I will reuse. I used some of that oil for the almonds, which came out beautifully with the orange juice. Gorgeous dish!

I run a very pro-butter/olive oil household but even I couldn’t to use all of the fat requested in this recipe. I carmelized the beets in half the fat and it still turned out great. Very delicious recipe!

This is a vegetable side dish, for dinner. The oil just cooks the beets and remains in the pan.
I threw the orange juice into the yogurt mixture to add more flavour and then toasted the almonds in the microwave at 30 second intervals -- This way they don't burn and aren't cooked in oil. I also put the saffron and water in the microwave for 30 seconds.
The yogurt sauce would be good with other vegetables or hard boiled eggs.

This recipe just mentioned again by Sam in what to cook this weekend. It is a delicious dish as is the lamb and baked rice which I have made several times. It would be great if people could understand that not all the oil or butter called for remains in the dish. So no, you are not ingesting 2 cups of fat with your beets. Save the remaining olive oil and butter from roasting the beets for any other cooking needs you have. It will keep in your refrigerator for some time.

This would be much better with no or less garlic, and more orange zest. The garlic completely dominated all other flavors. I never thought I'd recommend reducing the garlic in a dish...

....."then the basil", just to garnish, right?

It’s horrible, Horrible! about Anthony B.My beloved daughter struggles with depression. I live in fear.But you are not Missy Elliot when you cook. You are Sam. Keep being him.

An elegant and fun part of Christmas Eve dinner. Made beets and removed to separate bowl and made yogurt sauce with garlic the day before. Warmed beets up before plating. All seemed fine with early prep. Very pretty food

Like most all Ottolenghi recipes, this is a project. Personally, I didn't think the payoff was worth all the trouble and expense. The dish is good, but for this much work, I want great. The orange was too dominant a flavor. If I made it again, I'd use the zest of 1/4 of an orange instead of 1/2. And the juice with the almonds was completely lost. Between the beet, orange and saffron, I didn't even taste the basil. Very pretty dish, however.

Loved this and was a huge hit at a recent ottolenghi potluck I hosted. I drizzled some of the oil over the dish at the end because YOLO. I survived to tell the tale! Also added some microgreens to enhance presentation. Delicious!

love this. in answer to the queries below: It's a side dish. Use less oil and butter if you want to; but the drenching of oil and butter made my beets incredibly soft. In answer to the missing tbs of oil--don't be cheap just because the quantities aren't perfect in the list. you need to get in the ottolenghi rhythm, based on quantities at hand. For example: My beets were very large, so I sliced them in 1 inch thicknesses. Still awesome.

I use bigger beets (but still tender, no woodiness) -- pressure cook whole for 5-8 minutes so the outsides cook enough to slip the skins off off easily, then cut into bite-size pieces and bake per recipe (using less butter since my yogurt is very rich).

Can I prepare the beets a day in advance and bring them to room temp for serving?

Can I use cashew yogurt or will that ruin the dish?

I screwed this up by adding way too much orange zest, which made the yogurt bitterly inedible. On the plus side, bitter orange garlic yogurt turns out to be a fantastic marinade for chicken

With some adaptations, this recipe was a big hit for a dinner party. I added more saffron, lemon juice, and juice of a small orange, along with more orange and lemon zest to the yogurt sauce to make it more flavorful and give it more color. With small to medium size beets, I had to cook them much longer. I ended up with about 1 cup of oil and butter from the baking dish that I will reuse. I used some of that oil for the almonds, which came out beautifully with the orange juice. Gorgeous dish

OK, I'm in the minority here but I found this a pointlessly fussy recipe. I loved the oil- and butter-roasted beets (particularly the golden ones), but I thought the yogurt clashed with them. And all that palaver with a tablespoon of OJ and the saffron and the basil, blah blah blah--couldn't even taste any of that. It did look pretty with all those colors, but a dinner of confit golden beets with some full-fat plain Greek yogurt on the side would have done it for me.

I love this recipe and have now made it many times. These days I skip the butter and just brush the beets and garlic with olive oil before roasting. Golden beets are my current favorite. Also the garlicky yogurt is delicious, very mild after all the roasting.

Loved this fresh and unexpected flavor combination! Quite a bit of effort but would repeat for a dinner party. Used a combination of beets and turnips and found the turnips a bit too bitter for the recipe.

The amount of oil and butter to roast the beets is either a typo, or outrageous. I used beets from my garden that I had in the freezer, they had been roasted, peeled and then vacuum-sealed. I let them defrost, then slowly fried them in olive oil (2 to 3 tbs for 1 pound beets) in a cast iron pan, uncovered, alongside the unpeeled garlic. After about 30 minutes with occasional stirring, the beets were nicely caramelized and the garlic was very soft. ItWill make that again, it was delicious.

I run a very pro-butter/olive oil household but even I couldn’t to use all of the fat requested in this recipe. I carmelized the beets in half the fat and it still turned out great. Very delicious recipe!

This would be much better with no or less garlic, and more orange zest. The garlic completely dominated all other flavors. I never thought I'd recommend reducing the garlic in a dish...