If you’re wondering how to cook beets to make them taste like vegetable candy, you need to know that roasted beets are the BEST. Read on! Save This Recipe! Enter your email and I'll send it straight to your inbox. Plus you'll get new recipes from me every week! By submitting this form, you consent to receive emails from Happy Healthy Mama.
This post was first published Sept. 2015. Recipe card was updated 2018.
So, yes. I put both the words beets and candy in the title of this post. Candy legitimately belongs in the same title as a recipe for roasted beets. Wait! I’m not crazy. When you roast beets with coconut oil, their sweetness comes out and if there ever was a vegetable that deserves the name Vegetable Candy, it’s Coconut Oil Roasted Beets. 
Roasted beets are the BEST! I didn’t even realize I liked beets until I was an adult. I’m pretty sure the only beets I was served as a kid were canned beets. If you’ve only ever had canned beets, I urge you to give them another try.
Let me assure you, these ARE NOT canned beets. Repeat after me: These are not canned beets!
I can thank my CSA box for introducing me to beets as an adult. Not wanting to waste the food I was paying for, I started experimenting with how to cook them. Lo and behold, I discovered the goodness that is roasted beets. 
How to Cook Beets (So they taste like candy!)
You’ve got to roast ’em! This is one of those recipes that I’ve been making for years now but figured it was too simple to share.
Then I thought about the fact that there are probably a lot of people out there who don’t get beets in a CSA box and have only tasted canned beets and therefore pass them by in the grocery store. That’s a tragedy and I felt compelled to help change it.
For full disclosure, I’m the only one in my family who loves beets. As a baby/young toddler, Luke loved them right along with me, but now he’s a 3-year-old who’s a much more reluctant eater. (I knew the day was coming!) Meghan claims to not like the flavor much (what?!) and Tim tolerates roasted beets, but wouldn’t order a roasted beet salad at a restaurant like I do.
I still roast beets and think you should, too, even if you think you’re family won’t love them. Here’s the thing. Food acceptance often comes down to exposure.
Kids (and husbands!) benefit from multiple exposures to foods, and eventually learn to like previously rejected foods. It’s happened in this family plenty of times. Plus, I love them. Like, really, really love them. Their nutritional value is hard to beat. (See what I did there? Ha!) Beets will be a mainstay in this house. 
Now these are delicious straight from the bowl, nothing added. But I also love tossing them into a salad and often have a bowl of roasted beets in the fridge for that purpose. It adds a fun variety of flavor and texture to a green salad.
Ready to give this recipe a try?! I hope you love roasted beets (Vegetable Candy!!) as much as I do! Please let me know what you think. If you love coconut flavor, give this Coconut Rice recipe a try!
How to Make Roasted Beets
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Coconut Oil Roasted Beets (AKA Vegetable Candy!)
- Total Time: 0 hours
- Yield: 4 servings 1x
Description
This is the BEST way to cook beets! When you roast beets in coconut oil, they taste like candy!
Ingredients
- 2 1/2 pounds beets, peeled and diced
- 2 tablespoons coconut oil, melted
- 1/2 teaspoon coarse salt
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Spread your diced beets onto a rimmed baking sheet. Drizzle with coconut oil and toss to evenly coat all the beets. Add the salt and toss again to coat with the salt.
- Roast in the preheated oven 35-45 minutes, until the beets are soft, slightly caramelized, and starting to get crispy. Cook them shorter for soft and not crispy, longer if you like the crispy edges. Be careful not to burn, them, though. Enjoy!
- Prep Time: 10 minutes
- Cook Time: 35-45 minutes
Nutrition
- Calories: 183
- Sugar: 19 grams
- Fat: 7.2 grams
- Carbohydrates: 27 grams
- Protein: 4.6 grams
I’ve had this bookmarked for years but am finally planning to make this week. (Also thanks to our new CSA service.) My question is: if we don’t love coconut flavor, will we notice it in these; would you maybe sub another oil? Thank you!
I hope you love it! I’m glad you’re going to try it. If you don’t like coconut oil, my recommendation is to use a different oil.
Thanks. They were delicious with avocado oil!
Wow! This is just such a winner on so many levels! (I substituted baba ghanouj for hummus, as sadly, I cannot digest legumes, therefore no hummus.) Everyone really enjoyed it at the gathering we took it to last night, served with crudites and gluten-free crackers. I changed around the order of the layers with the salad on the bottom and found the leftovers kept well overnight and had it for lunch today. Thank you for this and all your awesome posts, along with origins and history – always interesting and fun to read!
This was delicious & dressing great! I added roasted beets too & they paired well with flavors. I think tomorrow’s lunch is this again with butter lettuce and a hard boiled egg too! Yum!
Sorry, I was addressing these beets with a quinoa salad I was making simultaneously-need to keep track of my recipes! 😉
That’s okay! 🙂 Glad you liked the beets!
How would you suggest storing and reheating these?
Store in the fridge in an airtight container. You can reheat them either on the stovetop, in the microwave, or in the oven. 🙂