Red beets are health-promoting vegetables with high contents of iron and vitamin b such as folic acid which plays an important role in the formation of blood. When cooked, it can be used in salads, soups as well as vegetable side dish and juice. Young roots make a valuable contribution to the human nutrition when eaten raw as the heat- and light sensitive folic acid is not lost. Simultaneous addition of vitamin C by orange or lemon juice can improve the utilisation of plant-based iron included in red beets.

Wash the red beets thoroughly with cold water and dab them dry. When eaten raw, remove the skin with a speed peeler but pay attention to the juice which has a strong colouring effect. When cooked or steamed, better boil the roots with skin first and peel them afterwards. They are done when the skin detaches easily after rinsing with cold water.

Make sure to select tight and firm roots without skin defects.
Red beets are often graded according to size and packed in nets or bags, or available loose on weekly markets. Furthermore, supermarkets offer pre-cooked and vacuum-packed red beets.
Red beets can be stored for two to four weeks in the crisper section of the fridge or deep frozen. Before deep freezing, lightly fry the red beets for 20 minutes in little water, then peel and chop.

Red beets are very tasteful and healthy as ingredient of raw vegetables salads, for example grated with apples, nuts and lemon or mixed with corn salad and then decorated with sheep and goat cheese. They are excellently suitable for vegetable stews and cream soups as well as cooked vegetable or as juice in fasting cures. Modern dishes such as carpaccio or "chips" of red beets demonstrate the change from the traditional winter vegetable to a trendy modern salad vegetable.