Shoyu Lees Roasted Beet

Normally, with a root vegetable this big, I’d immediately chop it up. More surface area, quicker cooking, less fussing, easy.

But something felt wrong about doing that– I wanted whoever was going to eat this to know just how big this beet was. A stupid goal, maybe, but a good jumping off point.

I decided to salt-crust roast it.

It felt a little hypocritical, because I was just arguing against salt roasting with another chef friend. Harold McGee’s On Food and Cooking (which I more or less treat as gospel) directly states salt-roasting “doesn’t have much to offer beyond simple baking”.

I’d also normally argue its a waste of salt, but today was different. I had a bunch of leftover spent grain from making shoyu. I was utilizing food waste, and I needed a way to cook this thing evenly. My home oven is spotty and shitty and no convection, so I figured the extra layer would buffer some of the heat transfer and lead to a more evenly cooked end product.

The shoyu lees crust was really easy. I had a batch of toasted wheat and tepary bean shoyu that was just ready to harvest. After extracting the shoyu, I had a blob of spent grain leftover that I put in a high power blender to puree (in hindsight, probably unnecessary, I think the spent grains could have been worked into a dough just fine). The puree was brought together with some flour, a few leftover egg whites, and extra salt until it could be rolled out and maintain shape, like playdough.

The crust worked surprisingly well. This could likely be applied anywhere you see traditional salt roasting techniques. I could see a whole roasted fish being especially nice. This technique should be universal for any spent grain brewing scraps, from beer lees to leftover garum solids.

I wanted to keep the beet theme front-and-center, so the accompaniments were going to be barebones. I topped it with some black quince vinegar, made by turning quince membrillo black (exact same process and time as black garlic). Then turning that into black quince wine, then turning that into vinegar. The best way to describe the flavor is that is like the balsamic vinegar of the apple cider vinegar world. I finished with shiitake salt because I had it on hand and the extra umami sounded great here.