Making Pickles
On Friday, I wanted to use the old garlic to make garlic pickle brine, because I love the brine. I’d had 87 bulbs left from 2017, and when I put them in the bowl in the living room 10 days ago, they were in pretty good shape. But time flew by…
The humidity and heat took its toll and about ½ of them were goners. My helper friend and I cleaned up what was left.
I was able to make 3 jars from these but I had a lot of brine left. I decided to make pickled beets, something I’d intended to do for the last couple weeks.
We went out and pulled up a bunch of beets, as we needed 4 lbs of cooked beets for the recipe.
We got them cleaned up and cooking and my helper had to go. They had to cook for 45 mins.
While they cooked, I pulled up 2 Walla onions and prepped a lot of garlic cloves.
Here’s the recipe from my Ball Blue Book:
4 lbs beets, cooked
3 cups thinly sliced onions
2½ cups cider vinegar
2 cups granulated sugar
1½ cups water
1 tbsp mustard seed
1 tsp salt
1 tsp whole allspice
1 tsp whole cloves
3 cinnamon sticks, broken
Original Recipe:
Combine onions, vinegar, sugar, water, mustard seed, salt, allspice, cloves, cinnamon sticks in a large stainless steel saucepan. Bring to a boil; boil gently 5 minutes. Add prepared beets and heat just until beets are hot.
Remove from heat. Discard cinnamon sticks.
Pack hot beets and onions evenly into hot jars, pour hot over leaving a ½” headspace, and close with 2 piece lids. Cool to room temperature. Allow to sit for 3 weeks to get the best pickled taste.
What I did:
I didn’t want to use sugar, so I eliminated it. The brine did not make the 4 cups of liquid, so I added ½ cup of apple cider vinegar and another cup of water. The original brine had kosher salt in it, so I did not add more.
The onions came to 4½ cups when chopped, but the beets only weighed 3½ lbs. I figured it balanced out. I didn’t want mustard seed in the pickles (they annoy me) and someone had once made me beet pickles w/o sugar and with garlic, black peppercorns, and no mustard seed. So I decided to put in a lot of garlic, fresh garlic.
My Recipe:
3½ lbs beets, cooked
4½ cups thinly sliced onions
3 cups cider vinegar
2½ cups water
1 tsp whole allspice
1 tsp whole cloves
15 – 18 peppercorns
3 cinnamon sticks, broken
1 huge garlic clove per pint
I put everything but the garlic and the beets into a stockpot and brought them to a boil and cooked them for 5 mins.
I’d turned off the canner while the beets cooked, but forgot to reheat the jars, so the onion mix sat while the lids and jars reheated. While I waited for the jars, I peeled and chunked the beets.
Once the jars were done, I heated the cooked beets in the onion brine until they were hot.
I put a chunked huge garlic clove in each jar, filled them with the beet mix, got the air spaces out and filled each jar with brine and sealed it.
They processed for 30 mins. I got 7 pints and 1 cup.
How long till they are ready to eat? Longer you wait the better? I love pickled beets but i never made them, usually buy em fron costco and they are yummy.
These are NOT sweet, like most pickled beets. The recipe says 3 weeks...
Pickled beets are so good. I use baby beets for mine. I used to use the larger beets but I find the baby beets are sweeter and I don't have to add as much sugar.
If I'd been on top of the game, I could have used baby beets, but alas, this is when I could get to it. I grow the Early Wonder Tall Top beet, and it seems, no matter how big they get, they are never woody, unless they bolt. And they get mighty big sometimes!
Never done any of this :/. Awesome!
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