Today’s recipe is a bit controversial in our household. My husband hates beets. He didn’t want me to make these, but Grandma had 5 recipes for beets and Beet Pickles in her file. The idea is to make EVERY recipe in her file, and that’s what I’m going to do. I’ll just have to make only one beet recipe per year. Everyone we know may be getting some beet pickles. I remember that both of my grandmas made beet pickles and that they were only for special occasions. I didn’t mind them. They weren’t my favorite thing, but I didn’t mind them. I loved the spicy, almost christmasy flavor of them.
We’ll see if the hubs decides to try some of these.
Here is the recipe as I made it:
Beet Pickles
This recipe calls for cooked beets to begin with, so I looked online to see how to do it – I’ve never cooked beets before (because my husband won’t eat them). The consensus was that you should boil them 25 minutes or until the skins come off easily. I did this, peeled them, cut them in half or quarters and we were ready to go.
The recipe also calls for pickling spices, so I made my own, but you can certainly use store-bought. I followed a recipe I found on the Taste of Home website.
Put 1/2 teaspoon of pickling spice in bottom of each pint jar.
Put cooked, peeled, cut up beets in jars.
Bring to boil:
2 cups vinegar (I used apple cider vinegar for these)
2 cup water
1 3/4 cups sugar
Put hot mixture over beets and seal (the National Center for Home Food Preservation says 30 minutes in the hot water bath for these).
We planted beets in the garden this year, but they didn’t grow very well (too shady). I had to buy these at the farmer’s market. The lighter colored ones are golden beets.
When cooked, the skins get dusty and almost come off in your hand. You can see here that I used my worst and most beat up cutting board so if the beets stained the board, no big deal.
Just don’t let this happen. I changed into my worst working shirt and pants so if I splattered on myself, I wouldn’t care if they got stained. So what happened? I dropped a beet on my rug taking them out of the pot! Oh well, I was ready to get a new rug anyway. Now I have to – this isn’t coming off! You’ve been warned!
Look at the pretty golden beets! What a great combo. I wonder if the golden beets will stay golden or if they’ll turn pink, too?
Keep 1/2 inch head space at the top of the jar when adding the liquid.
Voila! All done and ready to go! Can’t wait to try these! Now if I can just talk my husband into trying some . . .