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Hot food: Salt-baked beets

Slow, salt-crusted cooking keeps this vegetable luscious and ruby red.

Jill Dupleix
Jill Dupleix

Intense flavour: The humble beet has joined the salt-baked craze.
Intense flavour: The humble beet has joined the salt-baked craze.Steven Siewert

What are they?

The humble beet is the latest recipient of the salt-baked craze, following on from the traditions of salt-baked fish in Italy, and salt-baked chicken in China.

French chef Alain Passard was the first to turn salt-baked beetroot into a Michelin star at his Parisian restaurant L'Arpege in 2001, serving his betterave rouge en croute de sel Guerande with high drama - and aged balsamic vinegar - at the table. Word spread, and now any beetroot not found huddled inside a salt crust turns puce with embarrassment.

Where are they?

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Chef Joe Grbac gives beetroot a room of its own at Melbourne's award-winning Saint Crispin, with a vegetarian main course of salt-baked beetroot with puy lentils, watercress, horseradish, walnut, cumin and sumac. ''Salt-baking not only steams the beetroot, but seasons it as well,'' he says.

At Cafe Opera in Sydney's Hotel Intercontinental, executive chef Tamas Pamer pairs butter-poached marron with salt-roasted beets, pickled kohlrabi and a fluff of blue cheese; the salt infused with preserved lemon, olive oil, pepper and rosemary for added interest.

''Slow-cooking beetroot in salt makes it really intense and strongly flavoured,'' he says. ''It means you get the maximum flavour you can from the vegetable.''

At Russo & Russo in Sydney's Enmore, chef Jason Saxby salt-bakes beetroot for a dish of house-made ricotta, sweet-and-sour quandong, bitter honey and basil. Saxby says salt-baking is not so much a trend as a classic technique.

''It draws out some of the moisture and intensifies the flavour,'' he says, ''just like dry-ageing beef.''

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Why do I care?

Because the ruby-red baubles that emerge are the most intensely fruity, earthy beetroot ever.

Can I do them at home?

Very easily. Serve as a vegetable first course, or to accompany roast lamb. They shouldn't taste too salty, but if they do, rub the skins off and discard before serving.

SALT-BAKED BEETS

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Serve with balsamic vinegar, horseradish cream or crumbled goat's cheese and watercress.

200g coarse sea salt

200g fine salt

2 egg whites, lightly beaten

250g plain flour

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2 rosemary sprigs, de-stalked

125ml water

6 medium beetroot

extra virgin olive oil to serve

1. To make the salt crust, place the two salts, egg whites, flour, rosemary leaves and most of the water in a food processor and whiz until combined. Add the remaining water until the mixture forms a firm dough that isn't too sticky. Tip out the dough and squish together into a ball, cover with plastic wrap and set aside for two hours.

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2. Heat the oven to 170C. Scrub the beetroot and closely trim, but do not peel.

3. Roll out the dough on a bench and cut into six pieces. Place a beetroot on top of each one, and press the dough up and over each beetroot until completely sealed.

4. Bake for 1½ hours, then crack open the crust, brush the beetroot with olive oil and serve.

Makes 6

Sourcing

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VIC

Saint Crispin, 300 Smith Street, Collingwood, 03 9419 2202, saintcrispin.com.au

NSW

Cafe Opera, Intercontinental Sydney, 117 Macquarie Street, Sydney, 02 9253 9000, interconsydney.com.au/cafeopera/

Russo & Russo, 158 Enmore Road, Enmore, 02 8068 5202, russoandrusso.net.au

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Jill DupleixJill Dupleix is a Good Food contributor and reviewer who writes the Know-How column.

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