Procedure 1. Finely chop the beet greens, both the leaves as well as the stems. Place it in a big bowl and fill it with water and let it stand for atleast 5 minutes. By doing this any dirt/sand in the greens would settle down in the bottom of the vessel. Now remove the greens and rinse it in cold water again.

2. I pressure cooked the beet leaves and beet stems together. Add water just enough to cover the greens and little salt too. I left it for 2 whistles.

3. Now grind together the coconut, cumin, chillies, besan. Add little water if required.

4. Mix this mixture with the yogurt and add enough water. This should be in the consistency of pancake batter or even thinner.

5. In a saucepan add the cooked greens, salt and yogurt sauce. Remove the pan from the stove after the first boil.

6. Add coconut oil in a small frying pan. Once it heats add mustard seeds and curry leaves. Once it splutters pour this in the kootu.

My Notes The greens which I got this time had very thick stems. So I did remove some fibrous strands while chopping it. Usually I pressure cook beet greens and stems for 1 whistle only, but this time I left it for 2 whistles for the same reason.

Procedure1. Rinse thoroughly the greens and finely chop the beet leaves as well as the stems. In a pressure cooker cook the toor daal and keep it separately.

2. In a saucepan add all the ingredients listed for sambar except the toor daal and keep it on the stove.

3. The greens should be cooked completely. Add some more water if required.

4. Now add the mashed toor daal to the greens and let it cook for another 3 minutes.

5. In a small frying pan add the oil, once it heats add the mustard seeds. Once it starts to splutter add the methi seeds and the slit green chili and fry it for a minute. Add the tempering to the boiling sambar and leave it in the stove for another 2 minutes and then switch off the stove. This sambar should not have a very thick consistency also. It will taste better if it’s little watery.

My NotesMy family consumes very little tamarind, so 2 teaspoons is more than what we use regularly. So the important point is, use 1/4-1/2 teaspoon extra tamarind than you would use normally. The same goes with sambar powder and green chillies also. If you are used to spicy food, go ahead and increase it as well.

Procedure
1. In a vessel combine the beet water, tomatoes, salt and turmeric powder and let it boil.

2. Meanwhile do the tempering. In a small frying pan add ghee, once it heats, add mustard and cumin, once it crackles, add the chillies and garlic cloves and sautee it until the raw smell is gone.

3. While the mixture is boiling, add the daal water (if you have) and the tempering and let it boil once again for 3 minutes. Garnish it with cilantro and beet rasam is ready. The color was unbelievable, so was the taste too. This can either be had as soup by itself or mixed with hot rice.

Procedure
1. Cut the beet greens from the beets. I came to know from one of my blogger friend that the stems take more time to cook, so I chopped the stems as well as the leaves seperately, rinsed it and drained it in a colander. Peel the beets, cut into half. Now place the drained beet greens stems, leaves and the halved beets (with water just enough to cover the beets) in seperate bowls and sprinkle little salt in all the 3. I have a cooker which holds all the 3 vessels, so I cooked everything at once and kept it for 1 whistle. I guess microwave or stove top cooking should also be fine. The cooked stems tasted good. So you can cook both the stems and greens together.

2. Once the pressure is released open the cooker and cut the cooked beets into small cubes and reserve the water for preparing Rasam/Soup.

3. Now in a frying pan do the tempering, sautee the cooked beet greens and the stems for 2 minutes, then add the beets and finally the usili and combine it well. Garnish it with cilantro and beet usili is ready.

My Notes
Half a cup of daal is enough for a family of 3. But I soak 1 cup of daal and prepare the usal as always and use it 2 days. Prepare the usili as per the instructions. Use as much as required and freeze the rest in a ziploc bag. When you want to use it, empty the contents in a microwave safe vessel and either defrost it or cook for a minute and fresh usili is ready.

How to prepare Usili?

Ingredients:
Channa Daal – 1/2 cup
Toor Daal – 1/4 cup
Masoor Daal – 1/4 cup
Green Chillies – 1 (or as per your taste)
Red Chillies – 2 (or as per your taste)
Hing – 1 teaspoon

Procedure:
1. Soak the daals and chillies in water for atleast an hour. (I usually soak it the previous night itself before going to bed.)

2. Now grind the above, adding salt and hing.

3. Grease 2 idli plates and divide the mixture among the 8 moulds.

4. Steam it, as you would do for idlis, maybe couple more extra minutes. A knife/toothpick inserted should come out clean.

5. Once it is done, remove the daal idlis, cut them into small pieces, keep it in a plate, cover it with plastic wrap and keep it in freezer for 10 minutes. (Don’t forget that you have kept it in the freezer, then it will become rock hard)

6. After removing from the freezer, place the contents either in a blender or a food processor and powder it. The texture will be so good, if this method is followed. (Now you would understand why I have mentioned to keep it in the freezer. If it is ground as soon as it is steamed, it will have a lot of lumps)

7. This powder can either be used on the same day itself with vegetables of your choice (beans, carrots or a combo of both, in my case even beets) or it can be freezed for later use, so that you can have usili on a busy work day too.

Procedure
1. Simply tear the leaves and rinse it thoroughly. We did not use the stems this time, because we did not know that it was edible.

2.  The daal and greens can be either pressure cooked together adding enough water for 1 whistle or it can be cooked in a vessel directly on stove top itself, if you are using moong daal.  In case you choose to go with the latter method, first add the daal, turmeric powder, hing and enough water in a vessel and don’t close it with a lid.  If you close the vessel with the lid, the water will start overflowing while boiling and you will have to spend the next 5 minutes cleaning the range.  Once the daal is half cooked add the cleaned greens and cook it tender adding water as required.  Once both the daal and greens are cooked add enough salt.

3.  While the daal and greens are cooking add all the ingredients mentioned for grinding in a blender and grind it to a fine paste using milk/water. 

4.  Add this paste to the cooked greens and let it boil for another couple of minutes, while you prepare the tadka.

5.  In a small frying pan add oil and after it heats add the remaining ingredients and fry until the daals turn golden brown and add it to the greens and remove it from heat.

My Notes
1.  I have mentioned to grind the ingredients with milk because, while cooking any greens adding a very small quantity of milk will enhance the flavor of the greens.  This is my mother’s tip.  So you can either grind using milk or first grind it with water and after adding the paste to the cooked greens add some milk and let it boil for another 3-4 minutes.

2.  Another tip, while grinding for any kootu/daal using a combination of red chillies and green chillies gives a better taste than using either one of them alone.

3.  Find some more beet greens recipes here.

New Updates
1.  While grinding the ingredients for the daal, you can also use coconut milk powder instead of coconut.  It gives an excellent taste to the daal. 

Similarly if you don’t have coconut at home, you can also use carrots instead.  This works in any kootu/daal recipe and also in mor-kuzhambu (but you will have an orange color kuzhambu).  The end product tastes as good as using coconut itself.  This was my mother’s discovery.  Back in South India, there is a practice that they don’t want you to eat coconut for atleast 2-3 months after delivering a baby, especially if you are breast feeding.  The elders say that it will create digestive problems in the newborn.  So my mother experimented using carrots instead of coconuts in daals and other stuff and it came out very well also.  Even yesterday I didn’t have enough coconut for grinding chutney, so I used half a carrot. But you will have to increase the quantity of chillies to offset the sweetness of the carrots.  The chutney had a light orange color, but no difference it taste whatsoever.  

2.  Spring onions/scallions daal can also be prepared in the same way as above.  This is one of my favorite side dish for chapathis.  This is my grandmother’s recipe, which I had mentioned in my tribute to her.