As soon as I got back from vacation I hustled to get all the cucumbers into an overnight soak of water w/alum and the jars and lids ready for a major pickling session. It makes me so happy when I have onions, garlic, cucumbers and dill all ready at the same time!
This year, in addition to full-size dill pickles and dilly beans, I made a couple jars of “hamburger dills,” which I like because you can get more cukes into a jar by slicing them. (If there are no complaints, I might switch to mostly this method in the future.) I also tried a brand new pickle: pickled beets.
I’ve been skeptical of pickled beets because, well, truth be told, I’m not a huge fan of pickled things. However, my mom likes them and it seemed like it would be worthwhile to try for Christmas gifts. Also, I’m all about allspice these days, and it seemed a good place to try them out. It takes more prep than other pickles, because you have to boil or roast the beets, but that’s not a big deal.
I checked out a variety of recipes, some with allspice, cinnamon and cloves, and some with salt, all with varying amounts of sugar. Alton Brown roasts the beets with rosemary and uses tarragon red wine vinegar. He also used the minimum of sugar I saw in a recipe. I took his recipe down to its most basic, so this is sort of a hybrid.
Pickled Beets
2 cups vinegar
2 cups water
1 cup sugar
1 tsp allspice
shallots or red onion, sliced thinly
roasted beets (I made 3 pints with 10 smallish beets)
I roasted the beets for 50 minutes wrapped in foil packets until I could easily puncture them with a fork. Once cooled, I slipped the skins from them, sliced them and layered them with the shallots in pint jars.
Meanwhile, I prepared the jars, lids and seals for canning. I heated the vinegar, water, sugar and allspice (you could also use berries and just put a few in each jar, but this seemed a way to “control” the strength of the allspice in the recipe) in a saucepan until the sugar was dissolved.
Once the jars were filled, I poured the hot liquid over them, put the lids on, and steamed in a steam canner for 15 minutes.
Next up, sweet pickles and more baby dills… And of course, every day we have this in the fridge:
