Several years ago, as soon as Executive Chef Michelle Weaver of the Charleston Grill saw them in our catalog, she started to use them, appreciating the “color and the elegant drama it provides to the plate.” 

She uses them in dishes with beets as well as in salads and crudo plates. “They make a beautiful garnish,” she adds, “for vegan entrees, pastas, and lobster. If a plate needs a little color or drama, a couple of leaves of beet blush catches your eyes and draws you in.”

As a specific example, Chef Michelle uses beet blush leaves in a dish with roasted baby beets, labneh, pistachios, berbere spice, and pomegranate relish.

Chef Matt Kurze also loves beet blush but has no pictures to share. Here’s why. For twenty years, he worked as a private chef through Clue, LLC, serving a succession of some of the world’s richest people. In that capacity, he couldn’t share photos of dishes he designed for his clients, including the ones using beet blush. He recalls, though, a day that a Clue client wanted a beet dish, and he expanded her culinary knowledge by incorporating beet blush into a dish she was already familiar with—and she loved the results. 

Chef Matt is now the happy owner of and chef at Hibiscus Lane Catering Co., a company named after the street on which he grew up in the 1980s—where his dad was the master of the barbecue and his mother cooked organically, putting lunch and dinner on the table every day.

Because we chatted with Matt about how he uses his beet blush on day one of this exciting venture, he didn’t have photos yet to share, but here’s what he had to say. He loves the uniqueness of this luscious leaf, and how he can plate it in creative presentations. For example, he creates a marvelous beet pappardelle dish with goat cheese. He wilts beet blush and adds it to the dish and then uses the leaf as garnish as well.

Chef Matt also uses beet blush in mixed green salads and in several different ways in place of endive in appetizers. The leaf pairs beautifully in dishes as elegant as créme fraiche and caviar and also plays a key role in pairings with dried cherries.

Visual Appeal

Both chefs referred to the visual attraction of beet blush on a plate—and it truly is gorgeous, one that’s equally at home in a painter’s toolkit as in a recipe. It offers up intense, earthy beet flavor in exquisitely-shaped leaves. Each beet blush leaf is hand harvested with a scissor as the farm meticulously selects perfectly sized ones that overflow with flavor and visual appeal. We invite you to try them!