I was planning for a family group over to eat a buffet style meal and needed to fill in with some pickles. This recipe for Easy Pickled Beets in the Taste of Home Complete Guide to Country Cooking looked like it would be just what I wanted.
I fixed half of the recipe and the seven of us ate most of them along with the meal. They were really easy to fix, you do need to make a spice bag or use a tea ball. The pickling spice needs to come out of the pickles after they sit over night.
For those of you who do not use beets very often, they do stain things red. A nice shade of red, but not what you would want in a plastic container so be sure to store then in a glass bowl or fruit jar. Everyone said they would highly recommend them and I will agree with that.
The recipe is for half of the given recipe in the book, easy to double or maybe make 2 thirds of it as it is using canned beets.
Easy Pickled Beets
½ tablespoon mixed pickling spices
1 cup vinegar
1 cup sugar
½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
½ teaspoon salt
2 cans (16 ounces each) sliced beets
Place the pickling spices on a piece of cheesecloth and bring edges to center. Tie with food safe twine. In a large saucepan; combine vinegar, sugar, cinnamon and salt; add the spice bag. Bring to a boil.
Drain the beets, reserving 3 ounces of the beet juice. Stir beets and reserved beet juice into the saucepan. Pour into a one quart container or bowl. Cover and refrigerate overnight. Remove spice bag before serving.
OH...my mom used to make these. Love them. Maybe sometime after the holidays I'll try making them. I LOVE beets!!! I even have a funny beet story to tell sometime. Christmas blessings to all of you!
ReplyDeleteNadine, we'd love to hear your funny beet story. Christmas blessings to you and your family also.
ReplyDeleteLove pickled beets!♥ We use them to make pretty pink pickled eggs!Thanks!
ReplyDeleteAs the story goes, growing up in MN my mother made picked beets. Loved them! We never had beets any other way. I love pretty much anything pickled. When I married, my husband said he liked his beets heated, so one day I made beets with our meal. You guessed it. I heated the pickled beets. I thought it was weird, but hey. We had a good laugh & it became a family story. So I learned how to eat plain cooked beets. With butter. and the smell of fresh beets cooking? Oh my! What a wonderful smell in the kitchen is that!!! He & I are no longer together, but we still tell the story all these many years later.
ReplyDeleteNadine, Great beet story, I laughed when I read it. We all have our story of something we did as a new bride. Glad you learned to eat plain beets.
ReplyDeleteI love beets but have never tried making my own (I love them straight out of the can). Have you ever tried to make these without the sugar? My husband and I eat sugar free as much as possible (we do use some honey, agave etc but no refined white sugar).
ReplyDeleteNo, Michelle, but if you know the ratio of agave or honey to sugar it would be worth trying. Beets canned are not expensive so there would not be a lot of waste. I think I would try the agave first.
ReplyDeleteHave you every tried canning your pickled beets? Maybe using fresh beets instead of canned ones. I have canned plain beets, but they are, well....plain.
ReplyDeleteI have years ago made pickled beets from fresh beets. I would not use this recipe though. There are recipes in any good canning book to can beet pickles. They are good and of course keep longer than these will.
ReplyDeleteThanks, I will look up some recipes. For now I think I will try my plain canned beets with your recipe. Can't wait to try it. By the way, I love your blog, I just found it the other day and spent almost 2 hours looking through it. Yesterday canned your beef stew recipe. Thanks again.
DeleteHome canned beets should work great with this recipe. Glad you found us. We are always glad to hear from our readers. Feel free to comment and ask questions. The beef stew recipe is Sue's and she shares a jar with us once in awhile.
ReplyDeleteI love pickled beets. However my favorite beets are roasted with a little olive oil, and salt. Yum!!! The skin peels right off, and they just taste sooo good!
ReplyDelete