Why you should not add vinegar when boiling beets: expert answer

Beets, especially young beets, can be used to prepare a wide variety of dishes. And in most cases, it needs to be boiled. However, the vegetable is often quite hard and loses its color. To fix this, many people add vinegar, but you need to understand whether this method helps.

Nutritionist Halyna Pokhmurska (doctor_galuna_pokhmyrska) shared her thoughts on whether to add vinegar to beets and how to cook them properly on Instagram.

How to quickly cook delicious beets:

1. To keep the beets crispy, it is important to put them in boiling water, not cold water, as is often done. In cold water, beets slowly lose their juiciness before they are heated.

2. Do not cut off the "tails". The beets will lose the juiciness and sweetness as a lot of juice will be released through the cuts.

3. Do not salt the water in which the beets are cooked. First of all, beets are cooked with the skin on. And it is difficult to guess how much salt has been added during further cooking. And most importantly, salt contributes to the loss of juiciness, makes beets less crispy, more fibrous and raises the temperature.

4. Add a third of a cup of water to the boiling water to cool it down every 10 minutes. You can also add a few ice cubes to the pot. The low temperature is the key to fast cooking.

5. Beets should not boil. High temperatures destroy the pigment and "evaporate" the juice.

6. It is often advised to add a little vinegar to the water during cooking as if this will preserve the color. On the one hand, an acidic environment maintains the bright beet color and prevents the pigment from breaking down. That's why vinegar or other acidic products are added to our traditional borsch to preserve the color. Vinegar interferes with cooking and the beets may simply remain tough.

7. Beets should not be cooked more than the time required until tender. Then the beets will be brown and not sweet.

8. If the beets are not too sweet, you can simply add sugar to the water.