Beet pulp is the fibrous material left over after beets are juiced or after sugar is extracted from sugar beets. If you’re staring at a pile of it after making fresh juice, you have plenty of options: it works in recipes from veggie burgers to muffins, makes excellent animal feed for horses and livestock, and even shows up as a beneficial ingredient in commercial dog food. What you do with it depends on whether you’re feeding yourself, your animals, or your garden.
Cooking With Beet Pulp
The most common reason people search for this is that they just ran beets through a juicer and don’t want to throw away the pulp. Good instinct. That pulp is packed with dietary fiber and still carries the beet’s earthy sweetness and deep red color, making it surprisingly versatile in the kitchen.
Veggie burgers are one of the best uses. The pulp’s natural moisture and binding quality help hold patties together, and its dark red color gives the finished burger an almost meaty appearance. Combining beet pulp with walnuts, a bit of tofu for texture, and your preferred spices creates a satisfying patty that holds up on the grill or in a pan. The pulp also works well in baked goods like muffins, quick breads, and bar cookies, where it adds moisture and a subtle sweetness without making the batter too wet. Carrot cake bars, for instance, adapt easily to include beet pulp alongside (or instead of) carrot pulp.
Beyond burgers and baking, you can stir beet pulp into soups and stews as a thickener, fold it into pasta sauce for extra body, or mix it into hummus for color and fiber. Some people dehydrate it and grind it into a powder to use as a natural food coloring or smoothie booster. If you’re not ready to use the pulp right away, it freezes well in sealed bags for a few months.
Feeding Beet Pulp to Horses
In the equine world, beet pulp is a staple feed supplement, not a leftover. It’s sold commercially as shredded flakes or compressed pellets, and horse owners use it primarily as a calorie-dense fiber source. About 80% of the fiber in beet pulp is digestible, compared to roughly 40% in typical hay. That makes it especially useful for hard keepers (horses that struggle to maintain weight), older horses with dental issues, or any horse that needs extra calories without the sugar spike of grain.
Most horse owners soak beet pulp before feeding. The pellets in particular can be extremely hard, and soaking softens them while also increasing your horse’s water intake, a real advantage in cold weather when horses tend to drink less. Covering pellets with hot water and letting them sit for about 30 minutes is the quickest method. With cool water, plan on a few hours. The pulp will absorb several times its weight in water and expand significantly, so use a bucket larger than you think you need.
Daily amounts typically range from one to four pounds, depending on the horse’s size and condition. Horses that need to gain weight can be fed on the higher end. Beet pulp also provides more calcium than most grains and is comparatively high in iron, though it’s not a complete feed on its own. It works best as a supplement alongside hay and a balanced concentrate.
Beet Pulp in Dog Food
If you’ve ever read the ingredient list on a bag of dog food, you may have noticed beet pulp listed. It’s there for a reason. In dog diets, beet pulp acts as a moderate, well-tolerated fiber source that improves stool quality. Research on dogs fed meat-based diets with varying levels of beet pulp found that levels up to about 7.5% of the diet’s dry matter worked well as a fiber source without causing digestive problems.
At higher inclusion rates (above 10%), stool volume and frequency increased significantly, with dogs defecating roughly twice as often and producing much more fecal matter. Food also moved through the digestive tract faster, which can reduce nutrient absorption. So while a moderate amount supports healthy digestion, more isn’t better. If you’re making homemade dog food and want to add beet pulp for fiber, keep the proportion small and introduce it gradually.
Beet Pulp for Poultry and Cattle
Dried beet pulp can partially replace corn in poultry rations, but there’s a ceiling. Studies on laying hens fed diets containing 10%, 20%, and 30% dried beet pulp in place of corn found that anything above 10% significantly reduced egg production and feed efficiency. Even at 10%, body weight dropped. Egg size held steady until the 30% level, at which point it also declined. For backyard chicken keepers, this means beet pulp can stretch your feed supply slightly, but it shouldn’t make up more than about 10% of the total ration.
Cattle handle beet pulp more easily because their rumen is built to ferment fiber. Dairy and beef operations commonly use it as an energy source, and cattle can tolerate higher inclusion rates than poultry. It’s often fed alongside silage or hay to boost caloric intake without adding excess starch.
Composting and Garden Use
If none of the above applies to you, beet pulp makes excellent compost material. It’s high in carbon and fiber, breaks down relatively quickly, and worms love it. Toss juicer pulp directly into your compost bin as a “green” material, or spread a thin layer around garden plants as mulch. Because it retains moisture well, it can help keep soil from drying out between waterings. Avoid piling it too thickly, though, as a dense layer can mat together and become moldy before it decomposes.
Industrial Applications
On a larger scale, sugar beet pulp is being studied as a raw material for sustainable packaging and biodegradable plastics. The cellulose in beet pulp can be processed into nanofibers and formed into paper, gels, or composite reinforcement materials. Because it’s derived from agricultural waste, it offers a way to replace petroleum-based plastics with a renewable alternative. This isn’t something you’d do in your kitchen, but it’s part of why large sugar processing operations increasingly treat beet pulp as a valuable byproduct rather than waste.