Baking the beets in the oven instead of deep-frying makes them shrink quite a bit, since the moisture content isn’t replaced by the oil. This batch made a nice light snack for the two of us, but I plan on making a double batch the next time, so good they were. Then I’ll just have to use two baking sheets, alternating their places halfway through baking. To save a little energy, it’s best to make these after cooking something else in the oven, when it’s still warm – it won’t take much electricity to maintain the low temperature required to bake the chips.

The Chips:

• 2 medium-sized beets, peeled and thinly sliced
• olive oil (from a spray bottle)
• salt to taste

I peeled the beets, and sliced them very thinly with a cheese-cutter. I covered a baking sheet with parchment paper, and sprayed a thin layer of olive oil over the paper – you can also brush the paper with a little oil as well.

I arranged the beet slices on the baking sheet, snugly but not overlapping, and sprayed them with some more olive oil. Then I baked them in 100 degrees Celsius for 35 minutes, flipped the chips, and baked for 40 minutes more. At this point they were very crispy and dry, but not yet burnt – I did check on them every 10 minutes or so just to make sure they wouldn’t get charred. After baking, I salted the chips, and let them cool for 15 minutes before digging in.

The Dip:

• 3/4 dl plain, unsweetened soy yoghurt
• 1/2 teaspoon sugar
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon finely grated horseradish
• chives for garnish

I mixed all the ingredients and refrigerated the dip while the chips were in the oven, and then sprinkled with the chives right before serving.

Raw beetroot slices.

What we put in the soup:

• about 10 smallish potatoes

• about 8 smallish beets

• 1 onion

• 4 cloves garlic

• 1-2 teaspoons horseradish paste (or freshly grated horseradish, maybe a little bit less)

• 1 vegetable stock cube

• 1 dl (or about half a cup) oat cream (or some other vegetarian option)

• about 2 tablespoons olive oil

• 1 teaspoon sugar

• salt and freshly ground black pepper

First, we peeled our beets, and cut them in cubes. Smaller the cubes, shorter the cooking time. Then we brushed the potatoes, since we were lucky enough to have newly picked ones – there is no need to peel their thin skin off. If your potatoes are a little bit older and have thicker skins, you will need to peel them too.

Then we cut the potatoes into slightly bigger cubes than the beets. (You can also slice the beets and potatoes, beets a little bit thinner. The shape doesn’t really matter, since they will be mashed eventually anyway.) Potatoes cook quicker than beets, and this way you can add them in the soup at the same time.

After cubing the root veggies, we cut the onion and the garlic in small cubes. First, we sautéed the onion in olive oil in our cooking pan. After a few minutes, when the onion was translucent, we added garlic, and sautéed it slightly. Then we added the cubed potatoes and beets, and sautéed them for a short while, maybe a couple of minutes, to add flavor.

After all the sautéeing, we poured in enough water to cover the veggies, and added the cubed stock, sugar, black pepper, and salt. To save energy, we boiled the water in electric kettle first. And because we were hungry cooks, we were happy to reduce the cooking time by some ten minutes this way.

Then we just had to wait until the beets were tender. Depending on the size in which you cut them, cooking time should be more or less half an hour.

When the beets were tender, we removed the soup from heat. Now we added vegetarian cream and horseradish. If cooked, the cream might separate in nasty crumbs, and we didn’t want to risk that. Cooking horseradish will also reduce its nice spiciness.

Now we just puréed our soup with a hand held mixer. When the soup was velvety and completely smooth, we admired it for a while, and then adjusted the taste. We added some more salt, black pepper, and horseradish, until the balance was perfect.

Accompanying our soup, we had organic sour rye-bread. If you don’t happen to live in Finland, this can be hard to come by, in which case you can serve your soup with or without any other type of dark bread just as well.

The key to this soup is a perfect balance between the three roots; beets are nice and sweet, horseradish is hot and spicy, and potatoes add a smooth texture. If you’d like to fancy up your soup, you could mix some horseradish, salt and sugar in thick natural soy yoghurt, add a spoonful of this on top of each bowl of soup, and sprinkle with fresh parsley. We were too hungry to do that!