So I grew up eating beets...and I can taste them in my mouth...but for some reason, I cannot put words to the flavor...for those of you who have or still do eat beets, what would you call their flavor, particularly once cooked?
They taste like... beets, I guess. Pretty unique flavor. Slightly sweet, slightly earthy, low acidity... don't know. On the cooking spectrum, they like sour things, whether pickled themselves or paired with other pickled things. In mixology, they're almost always paired with citrus to bump up the acidity. Salt too. Beet juice can essentially go straight into a margarita. I only mentioned those things because flavor sets are often determined by what they're not or what they are paired with to compensate.
Yeah, that's not a bad description. One of my chefs has a crazy ability to describe flavor without comparing it to other foods. I'll ask her tomorrow if I remember.
I don't know how to describe any flavor. Beets taste like beets (unless they're very large beets, in which case they taste like dirt).
Therein lies my problem...I think @GeoffFromBykerGrove is kind of close...usually, you can describe food items as sweet, tangy, sour, etc. In this case, even though I am intimately familiar with the flavor of beets...like @Homer Potvin said: beets taste like beets. I am writing a scene where one of my characters is eating a dish with beets in it, it is her first time experiencing it and I am trying to describe the flavor. I suppose I could go with earthy (even though this is in a fantasy world and not earth), I am rather loath to describe it as eating dirt--I don't think it does justice to the vegetable, no matter how much I hated it growing up. I would appreciate the input from a professional!
Well, beets are a source of sugar, and I find that smaller beets taste slightly sweet-ish. When they get large and old, though, they lose the sweetness and become tough and fibrous (the latter of which is not a taste attribute, but does contribute to the eating experience).
IMHO they have a bit of a metal taste to them. Just a hint. If they are not pickled, they are very sweet. And firm in texture. And have the bit of dirt aroma you guys already mentioned.
go full phenomenology with it. Sit down and eat some and concentrate on what comes to mind, even memories and feelings. It’s rare for us to taste things we’ve never tasted before (at a certain age, obviously as a child it was pretty common) so try to revisit that. If you can’t taste beets for the first time, taste them again and focus on it in a way that makes it more intense.
