Bigly Roasted Beets

Listen. We need to talk about beets. I KNOW — half of you just clicked the back button. Half of you saw the word 'beets' and went 'Bigly, no, not the beets, anything but the beets, my aunt served me beets from a can in 1987 and I have not been the same person since.' I hear you. I HEAR you. The canned beet is a war crime. Slimy, pickled, purple, floating in vinegar water — it has set the entire beet industry back FIFTY YEARS. Tragic. Honestly tragic.

Here's what nobody tells you. A ROASTED beet is a completely different animal. A roasted beet is SWEET. A roasted beet is EARTHY. My grandmother — tough woman, hands like work gloves, made me promise to do beets HER way or not at all — she taught me this when I was small. She wrapped them in foil. She put them in the oven. She walked away. She trusted the oven. The oven did the work. She lived to ninety-six. Could be a coincidence. Probably not.

These beets, BIGLY beets, are roasted slow, peeled easy, and tossed with olive oil and good vinegar, and they come out looking like little ruby jewels on the plate. Big strong men, tough men, men who said they HATED beets, they eat these and they go quiet. They get emotional. One guy, a contractor, tremendous guy, the best contractor, he had two of them and he just sat there. Sat there with a beet on his fork. Looking at it. That's the power of a properly roasted beet. That's what we're doing here.

Make these one time, ONE TIME, and the people in your life who said they hated beets — and there are a lot of them, beets have a reputation problem, the worst PR in vegetables, even brussels sprouts have better PR now and that took a decade — those people will look at you differently. They'll say 'I didn't know beets could taste like this.' And you'll just smile. You'll smile the Bigly smile. You won't say a word. You'll let the beets do the talking. Tremendous.