Miso-Glazed Beets and Carrots Make Your New Favorite Side Dish

Bill, Judy, Sarah, and Kaitlin Leung are the cooks behind The Woks of Life, a food blog spanning several generations of their family. For the past two years, the entire family has used the blog — featured as part of Yahoo Food Blogger of the Week series — as a platform to communicate, tell stories, and share food across distances.

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Photos: The Woks of Life

By Kaitlin Leung of The Woks of Life

Looking for a versatile vegetable side dish to accompany all your hearty roasts and stews this winter? This is it.

A few years ago, my mom joined a CSA that ran from summer through winter. While the summer harvest featured a really wide variety of vegetables and fruits, things took a turn for the monotonous by the time winter rolled around.

As the temperature dropped, there was a suspicious escalation in the number of beets in our weekly boxes. So we had to come up with a lot of innovative ways to use them, and that’s when these miso-glazed beets and carrots came into the rotation.

This dish features a perfect blend of flavors. Miso, which is a Japanese soybean paste, gives the vegetables a subtle, rich, almost meaty flavor, while the vinegar adds tang and and honey a bit of sweetness. While there’s definitely an Asian bent to this side dish, you can serve it alongside any dinner, from roast chicken to beef stew.

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Miso-Glazed Beets and Carrots
Serves 6

2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
3 tablespoons miso paste
1 tablespoon rice vinegar or white wine vinegar
2 tablespoons honey
2 ½ pounds red & golden beets, peeled and cut into 1-inch chunks
3 large carrots, cut into 1-inch chunks
1 scallion, chopped

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. In a large mixing bowl, mix together the olive oil, miso paste, vinegar, and honey until combined. Toss in the beets and carrots until well-coated.

Transfer to a parchment-lined baking sheet, spreading the vegetables out in one layer. Roast for 40-50 minutes, stirring the vegetables a few times during baking to ensure they cook evenly. Garnish with chopped scallions and serve.

More Asian recipes:

Kimchi: Korean Classic Kraut

One-Pan Chicken Teriyaki

Easy Wonton Soup