Mum's Old Fashion Pickled Beets Recipe

Mum's Pickled Beet Recipe

First, harvest and scrub the beets clean. Trim the beet tops and leave about 2 inches of green on top. Do not trim the roots. You can save the beet greens and eat them fresh in salads, can them, or boil them as you would mustard greens. They are quite tasty. We feed ours to the livestock as well; pigs, chickens, cows and goats.

First, place clean, sterile jars in oven at 250 degree Farenheit.  Then, make your brine. Add all of the following into one big pot:

• 2 cups water
• 2 cups vinegar
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 tsp. canning salt
• 1 tbsp cinnamon sticks (broken up, but not ground up)
• 1 tsp whole cloves
• 1 tsp whole allspice

Stir a bit and then let it simmer for 15 minutes while you prepare the beets.

Once the beets are clean you place them in a large pot with water covering them. Boil the beets until you can slip the skins off.  To do this, you take a boiled beet out of the pot and put it in a sink full of cold water. Check to see if the skin, root and tops slip right off by gently rubbing the beet under cold water. If the beet doesn't slip off easily, just boil it a while longer, then try again. Continue to place the beets in cold water until all skins, roots and tops have been removed.

Pack the beats while still hot into hot wide mouth pint jars.

Pour or ladle the pickled beet brine over the beets and fill jars, leaving 1/4" headspace. It's fine to let the bits of broken cinnamon sticks and other whole spices go into the jar. They add excellent flavor. Put on the lids and tighten the rings (don't over tighten rings).

Process the beets for 15 minutes using water bath canning method. These are delicious and not mushy like some recipes. The old way of making these didn't use the water bath. They just added the lids, flipped the jars upside down to help seal the lids and then stored right side up. Today's science however, advises water bathing pickled beets to kill off bacteria. Please water bath.

You can use either red beets (Detroit Beets are the best) or a white beet, such as Albino Beets. The white beets are nice if you want to avoid the red juices of pickled beets.

Pickled beets can be eaten right away, but are better if left for a couple weeks to absorb the pickling brine. They make wonderful additions to pickle plates and side dishes during holiday gatherings. Or as a healthy snack when you open the fridge in the middle of the night--who could resist these fabulous pickled beets just like grandma used to make.

OTHER PICKLING & CANNING RECIPES

Pumpkin Pickles Recipe

Old Fashion Dill Pickles (Very crispy, snappy pickles with perfect dill flavor)

How to Can Mushrooms

How to Make Homemade Jam

Copyright © 2010 Cherie Kuranko ~ "InkSpot"

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