Pickled Beets

 For some reason I can't remember the last time I pickled beets. 

Which is really odd as we probably eat over a jar a week. Whenever we have them with a meal we all eat loads and often have to open a second jar. 

So with plenty of beetroot in the garden I decided to harvest some (about 3 weeks ago) and make some pickled beetroot. I used an American recipe from my canning handbook that came with my pressure canner. 

This involved boiling the beets up to peel them (so so easy to do, don't peel beets if you can help it with a peeler - this way the skins just slip off).  

Then slicing them and boiling them in the pickle mixture for 5 minutes. Then fill the jars with beets and the pickling mixture (with 1/2" head space) and process for 30 minutes in a boiling water bath canner. 

The mixture is simple. 

7lb of beets

4 cups vinegar

1 1/2 tsp salt

2 cups sugar

2 cups water

2 cinnamon sticks

(onions if you want - we didn't)

I did double the mixture and ended up with about 16 jars. 

We left it for three weeks to infuse and it tried them just the other night. We ate a jar easily in one sitting so full approval from everyone! Must make more now!

Who else loves their pickled beets. 

Interesting Beets

I've got quite a few beds of beets in this year and I love trying new and interesting varieties. 

So far I've got three beds I can harvest from at the moment and these are the beets from each one that me and the children pulled up for tea last night.

From left to right Golden, Di Choggia and Albino! 

Only the middle one has got a decent name! Shame really, who'd call a plant Albino! 

The Di Choggia is really beautiful when it's cut up but they all taste amazing. I think I need to do a blind taste test really to see which is best. 

This lot got made into soup and due to the selection it didn't have the deep red colour that you'd normally get from beetroot soup but still tasted amazing served with fresh baked granary rolls. 

What's your favourite variety of beetroot?