If you have seen me lately, you probably heard about how much I loved my dinner at the Bachelor Farmer.  My favorite dish was the appetizer, Beet Tartar.  No that is not a typo, it is made from beets, not beef.  Granted it is an all-around different experience from beef tartar, but for anyone who doesn’t love eating raw beef, that is probably a good thing.  I could have worked a little harder on the presentation in the above picture, but you get the idea.  This dish is actually really easy to do, but it is a little time consumer because there are quite a few steps.

The Beets:

I wanted the beets to resemble actual ground beef.  So first I boiled them, peeled them, then chopped them up.  (Note on the beets: you can boil them, bake them, microwave or steam them.  I boiled them because I think it is the easiest and yields good results.  Just put them in a pot of boiling water and leave them alone until they are tender–probably about 45 minutes)

 

 

I then tossed them into the food processor and pulsed it a few times until the beets resembled ground beef.

 

That is all there is to the beets–see easy.

The Extras: 

The beets are served in a Nordic fashion: surrounded by dill, horseradish, shallots, cheese, mustard, and capers.  The Bachelor Farmer served it all with toast, I served it with a thinly sliced baguette.  Both were good.

The Dill:  buy it fresh and chop it up.

The Horseradish:  I bought horseradish root and grated it.  I found the root at Whole Foods.  I am sure any coop or nicer grocery store would have it as well. It is reasonably priced, about $6/pound.

 

Shallots: mince them.  I wouldn’t substitute onions here.

The Cheese:  The Bachelor Farmer served this dish with a watery cow’s milk cheese.  I chose to do goat cheese instead for a couple of reasons.  I like it better, and the other ingredients are all very strong flavors, and I felt they needed a stronger flavored cheese to accompany them.

Mustard: Use a brown mustard of some sorts.  One with course mustard seeds would be ideal, but just use what you like.

Capers: I rinsed them off so they were a little less salty.  Then I chopped them up just a little.

For the presentation at the Bachelor Farmer, everything was on one plate, with the beets in the middle.  Since I was hosting a dinner for six people I decided to put everything into its own little dish for ease of passing.

As for eating, just add bits of everything to your bread and enjoy.  The flavors work great together.