This year, we tried something new in our early summer vegetable garden: beets. And we harvested them this past weekend! We ended up with a small mountain of them, which was satisfying and exciting.

But, to be honest, I often plant for joy, whimsy and fun. So, as I gazed upon my tower of stacked beets, it occurred to me that I hadn’t considered what exactly I was going to make. Had I ever even purchased a raw beet from the grocery store? Definitely not.

Beets are a little mysterious to me, and perhaps to you as well.

When I hear them mentioned, I picture Dwight Schrute from the TV show “The Office” taking a bite out of a raw, deep-maroon beet. When I brought up my large harvest to a friend, they quoted the line Jim uses when he dresses up as Dwight for a prank: “Bears, beets, Battlestar Galactica.”

It’s clear that I’m not the only one who thinks of Dwight when it comes to beets.

I’ve never considered the many ways one can cook and serve this interesting root vegetable, and since Dwight isn’t here for me to ask, down the beet-recipe rabbit hole I went.

I did the bulk of my research for this at my work desk, and as I scrolled through an endless variety of beet-centric recipes on NYT Cooking, I found myself contemplating possible recipes out loud. After musing about a “flourless beet brownie,” our news editor Emma turned to me and gave me the most sarcastic “Yum!” I had ever heard.

And who will be the first to blame her for this reaction? Certainly not me. And I’m the one with the mini mountain of beets to consume.

But a reaction like that obviously meant this had to be the recipe I tried, just to see if I could produce a non-sarcastic yummy beet brownie. Plus, we love an attention-grabber around here, and this clearly is doing the job.

So folks, break out the food processor; we’re getting down and ruddy with our first easy beet recipe.

Despite being flourless, these beet brownies bridge the gap between fudgy and cakey, offering the best of both worlds. According to the recipe developer, Jerrelle Guy, the raw beets make the brownies dense and moist, helping them stay luscious and soft long after they’ve finished baking.

Though the beets bring their own natural sweetness, pulsing the chopped raw beets in a large food processor or blender with some additional granulated sugar breaks down the hard root into a vibrant red base.

In fact, my blender did most of the work in this recipe. Baked until just cooked through, the resulting brownies are rich, subtly sweet and deeply chocolatey. If you prefer your brownies a little sweeter, substitute semisweet baking chips for the bittersweet chocolate baking chips. You can top them with a little flaky sea salt out of the oven – I certainly did. I ate three of them last night at 9:30 p.m., but feel free to serve them warm with ice cream for dessert or at room temperature with a cup of coffee in the morning.

I brought them into work to let the beet-brownie naysayers give them a try, and I got fairly good reviews all around.

One of my favorite reviews was, “I thought I would have to blame the beets for it being weird, but I don’t even need to do that because it’s not weird, it’s good.”

The slightly hilarious part is that this recipe uses one single, medium-sized beet out of my collection of nearly 30, so if you see another beet recipe next week, just know I had no choice.

The beets must be used.

Bonus beet content: Growing your own beets

Want to grow your own beets? You definitely should. They were really fun and honestly fairly easy – and we’re in no way garden experts, so you can trust me when I use the word “easy” in this context.

I’ve read from multiple sources that beets must have cooler weather to thrive, and they’re most suitable for spring and fall planting, allowing for multiple harvests. Unfortunately, this does mean we’ve likely passed our window for putting down fresh beet seeds, but I hope you’ll save this column and try in the fall.

For seeds, we used a Five Color Rainbow Gourmet Beet Seed Mix from Renee’s Garden (purchased at Walton’s Greenhouse in Columbus from its seed stand). According to the back of the seed packet, we were going to get a “vibrant assortment of beet cultivars, originating from the Mediterranean and Eastern Europe and belonging to the Beta vulgaris species.”

The seeds claimed there would be golden beets, pink beets with “candy-striped centers,” pale green and white beets that have a sweeter taste and more fun, beautiful varieties.

I’ll remind you again that I plant for whimsy and fun, so a visual feast with a palette of different-colored roots absolutely spoke to me.

We planted the seeds in a raised bed in late April and followed the instructions on the seed packet for spacing and thinning.

According to the Mississippi State University Extension Service, beets require loose, moist soil for best production.

Fortunately, we had good success dropping them into our standard soil, which is just a basic, affordable raised-bed mix (also from Walton’s).
According to MSU, an adequate supply of potash in the soil is necessary for roots to form, and beets will not tolerate acidic soil, so if you’re having trouble, it might be best to test your soil before planting.

And though I plant for whimsy and fun, I do my research because I also like success.

So, I also learned from MSU that consistent moisture is vital during the germination phase and throughout the growing season since beets have such shallow roots. Mulching helps retain moisture and regulate soil temperature – though we use pine straw to bed our vegetables, and it works well.

Another tip: Beet seeds are slow to germinate, so mix in some radish seeds to mark the row. Experts at MSU say poor stands of seedlings can often be traced to planting too deep or crusting soils after rain or irrigation, hence the need for loose, moist soils and monitoring.

Beets require 60 to 70 days from planting to harvest, which was fairly accurate for ours. We’re not great at marking exact dates, so we do our best to guesstimate the 60 to 70 days.

Something else I learned? You don’t discard beet leaves; they’re apparently an excellent leafy green. You can also use the thinnings of young beets as greens. We used them on sandwiches as lettuce, and they were great.

FLOURLESS BEET BROWNIES

Adapted from NYT Cooking/Jerrelle Guy
Yield: 9 brownies

Ingredients:
2 tablespoons butter, plus more for greasing
1 cup (70 grams) unsweetened regular or Dutch-process cocoa powder
3 teaspoons baking powder
1 medium red beet (about ¼ pound), peeled and cut into ½-inch pieces
1/2 cup (100 grams) granulated sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla extract (optional)
1 cup plus 3 tablespoons (7 ounces) bittersweet or dark (60% cacao) baking chocolate chips
2 large eggs
Flaky sea salt, for garnish

Directions:
■ Heat the oven to 350 degrees. Lightly grease an 8-by-8-inch baking pan with butter or canola spray and set aside.
■ In a small bowl, whisk together the cocoa powder and baking powder. Set aside.
■ Add the chopped beets, sugar and vanilla, if using, to the bowl of a food processor (or large blender) and pulse until the beets are just puréed but before they begin to liquefy, scraping down the sides of the bowl as needed.
■ In a small microwave-safe bowl, add 1 cup (6 ounces) chocolate chips and the remaining 2 tablespoons butter. Heat in the microwave in 15-second intervals, stirring between each round, until the chocolate is almost completely melted, up to 75 seconds total. Remove the chocolate from the microwave, stir until completely smooth, then immediately add it to the food processor. Blend it with the beets on high until smooth. Add the eggs, blend to incorporate, then add the dry ingredients and blend until just combined, stopping to scrape down the sides of the bowl as needed.
■ Remove the blade and, using a rubber spatula, scrape the brownie batter into the prepared pan, then smooth it into an even layer. Sprinkle the remaining 3 tablespoons (1 ounce) chocolate chips on top and bake until the brownies have puffed and set on top but are still a little fudgy when a toothpick is inserted inside, about 25 to 30 minutes.
■ Remove the brownies from the oven and allow them to cool for at least 30 minutes before cutting into squares and topping with flaky sea salt.