What happened to my beets ????

I have oven roasted beets on many occasions, wrapping washed, unpeeled beets in foil and have never had a problem. This weekend, following Patrick O'Connell's recipe for a beet carpaccio I tossed beets with olive oil, balsamic vinegar, sprigs of thyme and rosemary and put them in the oven in a foil covered roasting dish. After the suggested time of 40 min I checked them, took the easily pierced ones out and put the remainder back in. I did this several times as they were quite varied in size. Rather than getting softer with time the larger beets got hard and the ones I thought perfectly cooked also became hard and IMPOSSIBLE to peel. What could have happened ??

[Jenise]

Mamma mia is right. I've never heard of such a thing, Christina! What did you do with them? I might have tossed them into some boiling water--not that you should have to but at that point you had nothing to lose.

They are in the fridge. I'm afraid to look at them again.....they might be rocks by now. I am still going for a carpaccio though. I'll probably be able to mandoline them quite thin.

That's really weird. We roast a lot of beets (usually wrapped individually in foil) and have never had that happen.

I wonder how they'll be when you go to use them?

It gets worse !!!. They are hard as rocks. Sliceable but crunchy, like raw and the orange ones have a brown center......I can only think that the vegetable itself was a problem ??

[Jenise]

Brown center! I am reminded of when my chiogga beets turned black after cooking, in spots, but they didn't turn hard. This is really mystifying!

Could it be that they were too dry? Perhaps what little juice steamed out of them and instead of softening they became rocks.

I'd also guess that there was something wrong with the beets themselves, but that's just a guess.