Taking Inventory: Beetroot

Every farmer has a favorite crop. Sure, it’s a good idea to grow lots of different foodstuffs, but one is always a little more special than the others. A little more capable of lifting its harvester’s heart. For me, that crop is the beetroot.

Beetroots were first spotted sprouting out of Overworld farmers’ fields in February 2016, following the... checks notes... the Combat Update! Not sure what beetroot had to do with combat at the time, but then again, the same update also added igloos, luck potions, subtitles, and the mending enchantment – none of which are really known for their importance in combat.

Beetroots can be acquired in two ways – either by finding some seeds in a chest of some kind and growing them yourself, or by raiding a village and stealing their harvest. Wandering traders will also sell you the seeds if you can’t find them elsewhere.

They grow quickly – faster than other crops, on average. When harvested, you’ll get one beetroot and 1-4 seeds, unless you have a tool enchanted with Fortune in which case the seed yield will be rather higher. This means that even if you only have a couple of seeds, you’ll be able to fill out a full plot pretty quickly.

Once you’ve got some beetroots, your options are wide open. You can eat them raw to restore one hunger. You can craft six, along with an empty bowl, into a beetroot soup that restores six hunger. You can crush the beetroot into red dye. You can use the beetroot to breed pigs. You can trade 15 of them for an emerald with a farmer villager. Or you can throw it in a composter.

Image credits: Beet man // CC BY-SA 3.0

Real-world beetroots share many similarities with their Minecraft equivalents. They’re red, popular with pigs, and easily made into a tasty soup. Originally native to Europe, but domesticated in the Middle East, a beetroot is the root of a specific subspecies of the Beta vulgaris plant.

Humans have been eating beetroots since at least the time of the Roman era. In the Middle Ages they were a popular medicine, with 15th-century Italian writer Bartolomeo Platina recommending people eat them to cure garlic breath. In the middle of the 17th century, beetroot was also often used to color wine.

Today, we mostly just eat them because they taste good. Beetroot is a key component of many cuisines, but particularly Eastern European food. In Sweden, the home of Minecraft, a classic dish is “Biff à la Lindström” – where grated beetroot is mixed into meatballs and burgers.

How much beetroot do you eat in your culture? And what new recipes could you invent with it? A little creativity, especially when it comes to beetroot, goes a long way.