HOW TO PICKLE BEETS.
So let's start making phat beets okay so the first thing we're going to do is
1. We're going to put the dry ingredients in the jars
By the way have been sterilised and that's an important thing to remember when you start the process you need to sterilise the jars for about 15 minutes and when you buy the jars at nay hardware store or kitchen supply store there will be instructions the manufacturers box will include instructions long as you follow those you're going to be fine.
And you're using 4 and a half pounds of red beads is that 4 to have funds before cooked after cook after peeling and these were just roasted in the oven until they are tender and they are delicious, no I thought I saw nobody oven yes.
But that's an interesting point though because one of the things that I did when I was developing this recipe is I actually borrowed a technique from roasting beets.
When I roast beets what I like to do is to cover them in olive oil and put rosemary and then wrap in tinfoil and I discovered that that was actually a nice flavour node for this pickle as well not just for the rose to be okay.
So boil these until they're knife tender right that's right and then one cool because they are and they are very hot and you want to get the peels off while they're still warm thats right and the texture that you want is is just like what you want with pasta nice al dente texture.
Because once you process the jars later they'll cook a little more I don't want to you don't want to overcook them and a nice baseball -sized beats which clearly we have here is the way to go if they're smaller beets you cook them a little shorter right.
If they're bigger cook them a little longer okay so ginger cook them a little longer so ginger ginger right a sliced and then two medallions are going to go into each of these jars so we can go ahead do that and about a very thin, eighth of an inch or less.
Look I'm gonna pop two in each jar nice thing about the ginger is it's got a little sweetness to it that's not sugar sweeps we get into the island when I had one there we wanted to a lot of pickled beets have just a tremendous amount of sugar people, just back the sugar truck up.
And we want it to bring you know more of the natural flavour of the beet forward and then had some other flavour nuts as well and so rosemary Mitch when you put rosemary in each jar we're actually going to mix the onions with the bell.
So about a half a pound of what is that a white onion in Spanish on your that's a Spanish showing, Spanish onion when I can touch these with my rubber gloves because you can't don't do this with your bare hands because you will have pink hands for weeks.
One thing that's fun too with the rosemary is to try to line it up so that it's on the edge of the jar, so that it's on the edge of the far so that when you're finished you can see it to be pretty.
Ad you'll notice that we cut the rosemary so that it comes just up to this fill line and this is the important line for home canning you want to make sure that all of your stuff all the solid ingredients which we're about to put the beets, and comes right up to the line.
Alright and now to fill use a funnel the funnel is really good as you can see it fits nicely in there you can't do it by hand but this will keep the final result neater I think it's so important to use this wide mouth funnel because I use it for Jam making how do I pack these down, you want you want to press it down firmly but not you don't want to crush it I think that's good.
Alright so we'll move on to the next one, so fill these up and then what kind of liquid or pudding well we're going to do a brine a cider vinegar brine so we're going to do a cider vinegar brine and we're going to make a sachet with some spices in it, as well there and after you put the brine In, you can put a few more things in right.
Well you know what you want it the beets are going to rise up a little bit so we actually I think with this one we're going to probably move a couple of the beets over because what you don't I see you want to protect that that little top line the fill line.
And make sure that there's airspace in there because that's how the vacuum will form so the Brine is we're going to air the vinegar that's a cider vinegar and you want to make sure using five percent acidity vinegar it will say on the bottle that it is so is this stuff that you can just get at the supermarket absolutely, I don't say your vinegar.
So good for you and then water so two cups of water so it's a two -to-one ratio and one thing that's also good to do sometimes is to make a little extra brine this is our little secret ingredient we use fresh lemon juice a good idea, you have it a little extra acidic note.
Now the next thing we're going to do is..
2. We're going to make a little sachet
With these are spices these are clothes cinnamon and allspice so a teaspoon of cloves a tablespoon of allspice berries it is a nice piece of cinnamon we gather it up into a sachet and it's nice these mould spices really have the sort of the flavour of the holidays.
And this is you know one of the so a lot of pickles they just throw them in and you take them out, well there's different ways of doing it sometimes you put them directly in the ja you know some of the dill pickles we use we put pickling spice directly in the jar.
But we really want to infuse the brine okay this how long do you cook the brine well you're going to you're going to bring the brine to a boil and then let it simmer for ten minutes.
And then you're ready to and sugar a little bit of brown sugar third of a cup of brown sugar you know again I've found that it's much more interesting to use other flavour notes other than just sugar for this to give it more flavour dynamism.
And hopefully the final product will have a series up it's really fragrant it is so good okay good I think we're ready to actually start okay so so what remove the such a shame dude comes right out that gets discarded and then we're gonna bring this over to here and get it close, you want to do it gums.
So what I did is I brought the liquid up just right to the fill line we're going to let it settle for a minute because they're nooks and crannies in there and so if it comes down to see I'm a secret for getting rid of the Nixon crannies.
What's that? I'll show you I take a small rubber spatula like this good and I just stick it down the sides I do this with my Tomatoes this releases all bubbles perfect see do you do that I'm gonna start doing it right now, or the or the handle of a spoon it takes away all bubbles perfect.
It's really great so you process it you cover and then you process for how long we're gonna process these for seven minutes we're in a boiling water bath and I must point out that Rick also news widemouth ball jars.
Which that's not enough impeccable, wide mouth full jars. This is very strong do not ingest at all and when you're covering I always hold the top down like that perfect and really tighten you don't have to over tighten that's good that's perfect,
So now we're going to use this jar listen we're going to place it right into the home canner and they process for how many minutes so in minutes that's all seven Mel because you have so much vinegar
And then loo what they look like you made some little crostini's in the kitchen and we're spreading a little soft goat cheese on there adding a piece of the beat and crowning it with a blueberry.
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