It is beetroot season over here and the father person keeps returning from the store with a huge bag of beetroots… so I have been experimenting somewhat. I would say we were preserving, only – even the biggest bag, is eaten before 24 hours is up. So preserving I think not, but pickling for sure…
Let’s Meet the Players:
- 3kg of beetroot
- 1.5 cups of water
- 3 cups of Vinegar
- 1.5 cups of sugar
- We keep ours plain, but you can add: a bayleaf, half a teaspoon of peppercorns and/or mustard seeds, 2 or 3 cloves and even a cinnamon stick.
Let’s Play the Game
- Rinse and top and tail the beetroot and cover them with water.
- Boil steadily for about 20 minutes, until they feel soft enough to poke them with a fork easily.
- Drain and leave them until they are cool enough to touch. Then you can use a small knife or even a cloth to wipe the skins off them.
- Pop your beetroot back into the pot. Add your vinegar, sugar and water together. And boil for another fifteen minutes or so. This mixture should cover your beetroot, you can increase your liquid by just increasing the ratio: vinegar is twice the water and sugar amounts.
- Once your beetroot has drained and cooled for the second time, you can cut it into slices.
- At this stage you are supposed to pop it into jars, cover with the vinegary liquid and store in a cool place. This however never happens at our house because it gets eaten way too quickly for any sort of storage.
That’s it – so, so very easy!!!
WELL, there is my recipe for December!
My mother makes a delicious beetroot salad (grated) so I’ve never bothered because how could it even come close and……. she doesn’t measure, she just kind of eyeballs it and tosses in ingredients.
It’s so good we fight about it when she makes it because it’s so good when we have toast with chicken, or toast with gammon or by itself.
YUM!
Oh Marcia, your comment made my day!!! I have a couple of recipes good and ready to post in December… easy blogging for me and so many folk ask for these… I have a little recipe collating project on the go here. Heaps of recipes on scraps of paper, all popped into a box… it is time to get sorted!!! Hope you have had a good week!!!
My Mum used to serve beetroot prepared in the same way. I have some beetroot at present so thank you for the reminder.
We ate beetroot soup earlier in the week. It is a beautiful colour but needs fair amount of flavouring. We added balsamic vinegar and Bovril to the soup and I was quite pleased with the result.
Add beetroot to chocolate cake for are really gooey yummy twist, and a really lovely rich colour too.
Will definitely try this recipe. It would be great if you could do a similar post for using up onions- I would love to make onion marmalade 🙂
Oh Zoe, that is a great idea… we have literally tons of them!!! Hope you have a great weekend!!!
Oh Nita, the challenge is on. We will definitely give onion marmalade a try over the holidays. Hope you have a great weekend!!!