My love affair with French fries has been life-long. Beets, on the other hand, have never really been something I wanted to eat, and weren’t even on my tastebuds’ radar. Enter East Side King.
On my birthday freshman year, a group of friends brought me to the restaurant and treated me to a variety of East Side King‘s famously delicious food. Their Poor Qui Buns and Thai Chicken Karaage made my tastebuds soar, but it was their beet home fries that flipped my French fry world upside down. Shout-out to Paul Qui for taking this purple-tinted root veggie and transforming it into a beet treat I can’t put down.
In celebration of East Side King setting up shop in Austin’s Space 24 Twenty courtyard, I tried making my own batch of Beet Home Fries. Their crunchy exterior and soft center will have you poppin’ these bites non-stop; but at least this healthy potato alternative will make you feel just a little less guilty eating them.
Recipe adapted from Cooking Channel and What Jew Wanna Eat.
Beet Home Fries
Ingredients
Instructions
Preheat the oven to 375°F. Rinse off your beets, then drizzle vegetable oil and vinegar on them before wrapping in foil.
Leave them in the oven for 1 hour and 30 minutes or until they are tender and the outer layer peels off easily.
#SpoonTip: Peel the beets with gloves unless you want to be purple-handed. These beets will stain anything they touch.
Cut the beets into cute, bite-size cubes after peeling.
#SpoonTip: Unless you are serving a large amount of people, you can can cube all the beets and refrigerate what you aren’t eating today. This will save you oven-roasting time in the future and allow for more chowing-down time.
Cover the beet bites in cornstarch and fry them until the outside is crunchy. Set them aside to cool and lightly salt them.
To make the accompanying dipping sauce, take 1/4 cup of Japanese mayo and add the pepper, lemon pepper, salt, red pepper flakes and sliced green onion to taste.
Dip and enjoy.