Wheat berry and Roasted Beet Side (Pomegranate Balsamic, Dill Olive Oil)
/Side Dish Club recipes were designed to be produced by weight in grams so that nutrition information could be calculated so you will need a scale to replicate them.
Each recipe produces four servings for a side dish next to a main dish. This size is 115 grams or about 4 ounces (1/4 lb) in weight and about 3/4 cup in volume. For a full meal, you would double the serving size, and this recipe would produce two.
This recipe is inspired by my daughters who taught me to love wheat berries and roasted golden beets. The combination of roasted beets and dill produces a distinctly Eastern European flavor that I love.
What you will need:
Wheat berries. Ever wonder what a wheat berry is? It is the entire wheat kernal making it a true whole grain. Here is a great link with more information on wheat berries. I usually purchase hard red wheat berries from Bob’s Red Mill. But you may find other kinds of wheat berries such as hard white or soft red or white. Hard red are the nuttiest variety with the strongest flavor but any variety will work with this recipe.
Raw red and/or golden beets. My recipe used some of each, but I was making in bulk. You will only need a couple of beets for this recipe so if you do not want to buy two bunches you may want to choose just one or the other. If you have to choose, I would go with the golden beets, and if you cannot find golden, just stick with traditional red.
Beet greens. You will want to save the greens from your beet bunch as we will use them in this recipe.
Celery heart. You can purchase celery hearts however, I usually purchase the entire celery and then pull out the heart for my recipes, reserving the rest for stews, soups, etc. I may be crazy, but the heart pulled from a full celery bunch seems to have more flavor in it than the bags of celery hearts I find in the store. Plus I get the really tasty young leaves which I love to use.
Crumbled gorgonzola cheese. (You may substitue blue cheese but there is a taste difference.) You can purchase pre-crumbled, or buy in a block and crumble or chop yourself. Pre-crumbled is usually more expensive and also a little bit on the dry side.
Raw pecans
Better Than Boullion (Vegetable or Chicken) - Better than Boullion is used in many side dish club recipes. We love it because it tastes super fresh and you can get it in low-salt versions which we prefer since these days almost everything is over salted. You can use either chicken or vegetable broth for this recipe depending on the flavor profile you prefer. We generally like to use chicken, but that is not a good option for vegetarians. To read more about this product, here is a link to the website for Better Than Boullion.
Pomegranate Balsamic Vinegar
Dill Olive Oil
Extra Virgin Olive Oil (EVOO)
Cook the Wheat Berries
Wheat Berries take a loooong time to cook. I have tried making them in the insta-pot or a pressure cooker and I find that they never get quite as tender as when I slow simmer them.
It takes about 26 grams of raw wheat berries to produce the 40 grams of cooked wheat berries for a single serving. So about 104 grams of raw rice is needed to end up with about 164 grams for your recipe. Cook in accordance with package instructions for the ratio of raw grain to water, but add 1 Tablespoon of Better than Boullion to the warm cooking water. Make sure to stir in the boullion until it is dissolved in the water before adding the wheat berries or you will get sections of berries with all of the boullion and some with none … yuck! If you cook per the instructions and the berries still seem too hard, just add a little water and keep cooking!
Once your wheat berries are cooked, measure out 164 grams and set it aside to cool in the refrigerator. If you have a little more or less than 164 grams, do not worry. Unless you want the nutrition information to match exactly, you can go a little under or over on the berries.
Roast your Beets.
To roast your beets, cut off any extra leave ends and the long root tail, thoroughly wash off any dirt, and pat them dry. Then loosly seal them each individually in alluminum foil and place them on a baking dish. The dish is just needed in case the juices leak out while cooking and you do not want them baking into your oven bottom. Bake them at 375 degrees. If you are only doing a few beets, they can be easily done in a toaster oven. They take about 45 minutes to cook, depending on the size of the beets (large beets can take an hour and small ones only 1/2 hour). They are finished when a fork easily slides into the center.
Once they are roasted remove the alluminum foil and then they need to cool before peeling. You can put them in the refrigerator to accelerate cooling or just set them aside. They are usually cool enough to peel in 15-20 minutes.
Wash and dry your beet greens.
You can do this while the wheat berries are cooking or beets are roasting
I always thoroughly wash my garden ingredients before using them. I create a vinegar wash (about 1 cup of white vinegar to a gallon of water) and place the garden ingredients into the vinegar wash for about 5 minutes before rinsing. This is just “me” as I worry about germs on fresh veggies. But the vinegar wash is certainly optional.
Also thoroughly dry your vegetables, which in this case is just the beet leaaves, before using. I usually just set my leaves out to dry, but if you are in a rush, you can put use a fan set on low to blow are over them and accelerate drying.
Roast your beet greens.
Your beet greens will roast fairly quickly and if your beets are still cooking you can put them in the same oven.
Just toss them lightly in olive oil, place them on a cooking sheet and put them in the oven. Wait about 10 to 15 minutes and then see if they are nice and crunchy. Don’t wait too long becuase once they are done they will burn quickly.
You want to roast them until they are crispy so they can be crumbled into your side dish.
Meanwhile measure celery heart, pecans, and cheese.
For measuring I suggest the following:
Set your scale on the counter and turn it on.
Make sure it is set to grams.
Set a large bowl on the side to hold all of your measured ingredients.
Set a smaller container on the scale to collect your individual ingredients
Tare out the scale to remove the weight of the container on the scale.
Next …
Celery Heart: Measure out 37 grams of celery with leaves from the center of the heart. Finely dice the celery heart and put it into the larger bowl. Replace the empty bowl onto the scale and re-tare so the scale shows zero.
Raw Pecans: Measure out 23 grams of whole raw pecans. Chop the pecans and put them into the larger bowl. Replace the empty bowl onto the scale and re-tare so the scale shows zero.
Gorganzola Cheese: Measure out 28 grams of crumbled gorganzola cheese and set it aside to add later.
Peel, measure and chop roasted beets
Once the beets are cooled, you should be able to peel off the skin with a small paring knife.
Chop beets into small pieces and place them into your bowl on the scale until you have 161 grams. Place the beets into the large bowl with the other ingredients.
Measure and crumble beet greens.
Once the greens are crumbly, measurement can be inexact. You want about 5 grams of roasted greens to crumble into your recipe, but if you end up with a little less or more, just use all that you have. You just hand crumble them into the big bowl. You may find that the leaves crumble and sometimes the stems are left. You can toss the stems aside or chop them finally and add them in too.
Make your dressing.
Place a medium size mixing bowl on the scale.
Pour in 29 grams of pomegranate balsamic vinegar.
Pour in 15 grams of dill olive oil.
Remove bowl from scale and whisk using a wire whisk briskly until ingredients are fully emulsified, i.e. thick, creamy, and not separating.
(Note that I tend to go light on dressing. Many side dish customers wanted a little more dressing and for them I would add extra on the side. For the dressing rich flavor increase the amount of each ingredient by 50%. Just note that this will affect the nutrition information.)
Assemble your side dish.
By now your wheat berries should be nice and cool, so it is time to bring all of the ingredients together.
Mix your dressing into your wheat berries until thoroughly mixed. This ensures that the dressing is fully distributed but prevents your other ingredients from becoming over processed via mixing.
Add in all of the other ingredients and mix lightly so that everything is well distributed.
As for the gorgonzola cheese, I like it best crumbled over the top. If you are making this in advance, you can set the cheese aside and put it on when serving. However, if you want to add the cheese in advance, add it last and just mix very lightly.
Nutrition Information.
