Thursday, August 4, 2011

Pickled Beets-Canned

Here is the recipe I decided to use. I used my own pickling spice (already posted on this blog) although you can buy it locally or online.


To prepare the beets for this recipe you will want to leave the root and 2 inches of the stem on the beet. Beets have a tendency to bleed if you remove these areas too soon.

Scrub the beets thoroughly to remove excess dirt and other particles.

Put the beets in a large sauce pan and add water until the beets are covered. Bring the beets to a boil and cook until tender. This can be 20-40 minutes depending on the size and quantity of beets you are processing. OR you can choose to pressure cook them from 10-30 minutes depending on their size.

Remove cooked beets from sauce pan and run cool water over them. OR you can put them into a bowl of icy water and leave them till you are ready to keep working on them.

You should now be able to easily remove the skin, root and stem of each beet.

Now that you have the beets prepared we can continue with the canning process. This recipe makes about six pint jars. 


Ingredients for Canning Pickled Beets
3 tbsp - pickling spice

2 1/2 cups - white vinegar
1 cup - water
1 cup - granulated sugar
10 cups - prepared beets



Directions for Canning Pickled Beets
1. Prepare canner, jars and lids.
2. Put the pickling spice in cheesecloth, creating a spice bag.
3. Combine the following into a large stainless steel sauce pan:
- vinegar - water - sugar - spice bag
4. Bring to a boil over medium heat and stir until the sugar is dissolved.
5. Reduce the heat and boil for 15 minutes more.
6. Remove the spice bag.
7. Add the beets to the mixture and return to a boil.
8. Remove beets from mixture with a slotted spoon put into hot jars. Leave 1/2 inch of room at top of jar.
9. Ladle the hot pickling liquid into each jar, making sure the beets are covered. Remove air bubbles and add more liquid if required. Again, you want to make sure you leave at 1/2 each of head space at top of each jar.
10. Wipe the rim of each jar and place a lid and band on each.
11. Put the jars in the canner and place lid on top
12. Make sure the jars are completely covered with water.
13. Bring to a boil and process for 30 minutes.
14. Remove canner lid and let cool for 5 minutes.
15. Remove the jars and let cool before storing.


**I doubled the liquid. Even though I only had enough beets for 4 pints, I only had maybe one more pint of liquid left. So this would not have made enough for 6 (as it states). Although this was easy to do, it took a lot of time because of all the cooking. The finished product looks beautiful! And the spices smelt amazing. Can't wait to try them when it gets to be winter!

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