Monday, September 12, 2011

Pickled Beets and Eggs

Yesterday I was contemplating the heap of beets accumulating in the crisper drawer and wondering what I was going to do with all of them. As luck would have it, I had managed to harvest some of the Burpee's Golden when they were still small--just the right size for pickling. For some added interest, I decided to include a few hard-boiled eggs.


In the past I've pickled the typical red beets together with eggs. The color from the beets works its way into the egg white giving it a rosy pink color. While the color of the golden beets isn't as intense as the red ones, I'm hoping to end up with some golden eggs. They may not protect us from a failing economy, but they'll be fun to eat.


The recipe I used is the "Spicy Pickled Beets" in the Ball Blue Book Guide to Preserving, a book I highly recommend to anyone looking to try canning and pickling. As you can see in this shot of the finished product, I didn't use the recommended two-part lid canning jars. I'm treating this batch as refrigerator pickles that will be eaten up in a relatively short time. Now I just have to have the patience to wait a few days for the flavors to develop before I can taste the results!

6 Responses:

Sunita Mohan said...

Those are beets?! Wow! I've never seen anything like that here.

Shady Character said...

Aren't they pretty? I should have shown an unpeeled one. They have redder shoulders and then get more gold underground. Inside, though, they're all gold.

Unknown said...

Ah...if only pickled eggs weren't tough...the concept is lovely....the execution, well...hmmm.

Shady Character said...

True, the texture issue is a legitimate concern. I wonder if there's a way to avoid the rubberiness but I know that when protein and acid mix that's pretty much what you get. Time for more research.

Mil said...

Did you get to taste them yet? I'm very curious as I've just only roasted beets.

How lovely, I was just imagining some kind of beet and egg salad with arugula.

How long did you cook the eggs in the pickle solution?

Shady Character said...

Tasting is scheduled for this evening. Since the eggs were already hard cooked I didn't want to overdo them and just tossed them in with the beets for a couple of minutes.