Until I began growing beets, I underrated these fully edible plants and the many ways to prepare them. I prefer beet greens and stems when they’re young and tender, either raw or lightly wilted. But when it comes to the bulbous roots, I think that the more time you invest, the better they taste.

Raw beetroots sometimes taste slightly bitter. Boil or steam them, and their earthy flavor starts to sweeten. Roast them in the oven or on a grill, and their natural sugars caramelize. For ultimate flavor, I give cooked beets a secondary treatment and smoke them, as I explain this week in my Twice as Tasty column for the Flathead Beacon.

All beet varieties smoke equally well. Red ones retain their rich wine color, and sliced Chioggias show off their candy cane stripes. Golden ones keep their sunny hue when smoked and carry more flavor into Roasted Golden Beet and Garlic Salad.

Learn more about cooking beets and get the complete recipe for Roasted and Smoked Beets with Orange Vinaigrette in my column.

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Twice as Tasty

My grill doubles as my low-temperature smoker, so I often oven-roast beets just before I light a smoke tube. When I’m lighting a chimney of charcoal for a dinner of Wasabi-Dusted Grilled Shrimp or Veggie Shish Kebabs with Garlicy Marinade, I grill the beets with the coals and then refrigerate them to smoke the next day.

I have a small smoke tube that burns for 3 hours and a larger one that burns for about 5 hours, so I only need to fill a tube partway with pellets to smoke beets—or pack it to the top and follow the beets with other food. If you’re using hardwood chips in a charcoal grill, you’ll still have coals left when the beets are done and can keep the smoke going with additional chips. Beets can handle a hot or cold smoke, which allows many options for the add-on project.

Here are just a few of my favorite foods to smoke after beets. You can find more ideas in the recipe index.

• Mushrooms: Meaty fungi smoke even more quickly than beets, just 20 minutes at or below 175°F. When sliced and seared, they soak up Vegan Memphis-Style Barbecue Sauce as well as any meat.
• Eggplant: I give eggplant the same treatment as mushrooms for another take on vegan barbecue. Smoked eggplant also makes an even tastier version of Grilled Eggplant Baba Ghanoush.
• Cherries: Smoke tart pie cherries for the ultimate cocktail garnish. Smoked Cherries are off the grill in just 45 minutes if you smoke them at or below 175°F but can linger slightly longer when cold smoked.
• Cheese: You need to Cold-Smoked Cheese to keep it from melting, but it only takes about an hour to impart flavor.
• Chilies: I give Home-Smoked Chili Peppers at least 1-1/2 hours with a smoke tube or hardwood chips. If I plan to fully dehydrated the peppers, I can just walk away and leave them on the smoker until the pellets burn themselves out. They won’t really pick up more smoky flavor, but they’ll become drier the longer they smoke.
• Fish collars and bellies: Whenever I visit Bellingham, I buy fish collars and bellies direct from area fisherfolk at the fabulous Bellingham Dockside Market and bring them home to brine and smoke. I smoke these at 175°F for 4 to 5 hours, so filling my largest smoke tube and kicking off the session with beets takes the pellets down to ashes.

Read this blog post to get more fired up about smoking and grilling.

Want more Twice as Tasty recipes? Get my books! Click here to order a personally signed, packaged, and shipped copy of The Complete Guide to Pickling directly from me. I also share tasty ways to use pickles in The Pickled Picnic; it’s only available here.