Cultivars of the Beetroot
The common beetroot originates from the Sea Beet, grown along the western coast of Zitis. A heart and tough vegetable, it could be eaten raw but had an unpleasant texture and taste. It was one of the earliest crops to be domesticated regionally, and as a result, it has many cultivars.
- Wild sea beet - this is not farmed but still foraged across the coast and riverbanks. The tuber and root is used in stews, with plenty of potatoes, while the leaves are typically fried.
- Common Beetroot - this is a family of domesticated cultivars of the wild beet. They are smaller, much denser, and grow in around 50 days to maturity, allowing for multiple harvests in a season. These beets have smaller leaves with an inoffensive taste, that are mostly used in soups as they shrivel when fried. The tubers can be a variety of colors, including white, yellow, pink, and a dark purple. The yellow and red pigmentations overpower the color of any dish they are used in, and additionally, serve as an important source of red and yellow dye.
- Sugar Beet - a relatively new cultivar, the grow in drier climates and have a longer harvest season. They are extremely sweet, with white or red tubers, and can be processed to produce sugar, making them an important luxury crop. The sugar that is produced can be either white or pink, with the pink sugar acting as a cheaper and lower grade sugar that retains some taste of the beetroot.
- Green beet - This is a beet with a small and generally inedible tuber but with an extensive leafy growth. These taste similar to spinach, but with a much thicker and juicier stalk - the leaves and stalk are typically cooked separately and then recombined.
- Fodder Beet - an primitive green beet, these have much larger leaves that are also significantly more bitter, making them generally unfit for human consumption but a great source of iron for livestock. Farmers know that placing a small amount of these into livestock troughs promotes their livestock’s health in some way, so they tend to be grown in small amounts. Their tubers are yellow or orange, and are typically also fed to livestock, especially pigs.
- Chard - another leafy beet, these have large, round and somewhat red leaves, but retain a large tuber as well, which is much more tender than usual. Both are tasty and can be fried together, but are not well suited to a soup. A common field snack is to steam the tuber, and wrap it inside the leaf to carry and eat as a wrap on demand. These tend to have a longer growing season with more intensive care required, so they are a common garden crop but rarely grown at scale.