Pickled Beets

I don't pickle stuff. I did 1 jar of pickles once. And I took a pickling class at Cardo's Farm Project once. I like the idea, but I just don't take the time to pickle or jar stuff. Last time I was at Cardo's, they gave me a big ole mess of beets to practice pickling with. So here's my experiment.

Above: What Cardo's gave me. I pickled most of them. I have a few saved to make beet chips.

First, scrub your beets.

Boil your beets. I had a lot and it took about 1 hr and 45 minutes. You want them to be tender.

 Peel your beets. The skins should rub right off.

Lots of good stuff for the compost.

I left the smaller ones whole. I quartered the large ones (the 2 big golden beets I cut into 8 pieces).

When I was draining them, I just couldn't drain all of that pretty red water. So I saved a bottle. I googled it and apparently using this water is very popular in Russian cooking. It's a good broth, great with cabbage, good in soups, etc. I gave some to The Moose and he liked it.

 I did 4 cups vinegar (2 c. white, and 2 c. apple cider) and 4 cups water. That ended up being too much liquid. But that's what I started with. Told you it was an experiment. Bring that to a boil

Add 3 tblsp. pickling spice.

Remove from heat and add the beets. I had too much liquid, so I poured some out. Which meant some of the spice poured out. I added another tblsp of spice. Add 2 tblsp. kosher salt (not pictured; there is a pickling salt, but since this is a beginning experiment, I didn't purchase that for this round).

The end result:

I did not jar or can any of them. I don't have the supplies to do that. Plus, I don't plan on needing to keep these for a long enough time to pressure cook them.

Overall, this was super dooper easy. Surprisingly easy!

I took my pickled beets to the farmer's market today and got great reviews! I'm really trying to like beets, and they are growing on me. I think I'm starting to like the pickled beets (mainly because I love vinegar).  I think next time, I will slice them like pickles. I think I will like that cut a lot better. And I got great recommendations from customers at the market. One lady told me she adds raisins to her pickled beets. That sounds pretty awesome. Another lady said she adds ginger.