Friday, June 18, 2010

Pickled Beets

I'm told that beets aren't actually completely year-round in SoCal, but I'm starting to have my doubts. Beets are such a CSA constant that I'm beginning to imagine that at the end times, when there's nothing left living but the cockroaches, they will be dining on beets.

Lucky for us, beets are darn tasty, or it might be hard to take so many. Still, you need options besides salads for your beet bounty.

I spent long enough in the midwest to enjoy a good pickled beet, and now, as we are rounding into the summer, I'm starting to crave them again. Pickled beets make a great side dish, keep forever, and are tremendously kid-friendly.

Here's how you do it:

Gather 2 shares of beets, cut off the tops, and scrub them well. Boil them until soft, about 40 minutes.

Meanwhile, mix 2 C sugar, 2 C cider vinegar, and 2 C water in a sauce pan. Bring to a boil. Add 1 1/2 tsp salt, 2 cinnamon sticks, and 3 Tbs pickling spice, and continue to boil for 15 minutes. Let cool.

Cool beets, remove skin and slice into rounds. Add beets to pickling liquid and refrigerate. For a truly midwestern kick, add peeled whole hardboiled eggs. After a couple of days, slice and serve the purple eggs.

- Christiana Thomas

3 comments:

Scrumptious said...

For some reason all the 30-minute vegan cookbooks I'm trying out are really into pickled beets. They're always like, "To jazz up this wrap, throw in some pickled beets!" "Salad suggestion: add some pickled beets!" Really? Do most people just have pickled beets lying around? I've never seen them at the store, so they aren't a convenience food like dill pickles, as far as I can tell. So why on earth would I just "happen" to have some pickled beets to add to my 30 minute meal?

/end rant Thanks for the recipe, now I can have my own supply of pickled beets and be like the cool kids! How long do they last in the fridge?

Christiana Thomas said...

You've easily got 6 weeks stored in the fridge. The only place I've ever seen them commercially available (always, but always on shelves above the cuts of meat with jars of pickled eggs and pickled pigs feet nearby, no joke) is in the upper midwest, where they are available in every gigantic superstore for miles. I would bet money that your vegan cookbook authors grew up in the midwest, where picked beets are a ubiquitous summer food, just like corn.

nanoking said...

Awesome! Bring on the pickling! Lacto pickling is an option too. Google produced this link.

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