Today is pickled beet day. I noticed last week when I went rummaging through the greenery (a lot of weeds) in the garden that the tops of my scrumptious purple root veggies were starting to show above the soil line.
That usually means they’re ready for pulling. Most of them are about the size of my fist - which, in beet terms, is the sweet spot. Any bigger and they get woody. Any smaller and they’re just not meaty enough.
So off I went, wheelbarrow in tow, to dig up the tasty treats that had been expanding and expanding underground since the May 24 weekend.
While I really love the final product, processing beets is extremely messy, so you have to gird yourself and be ready to have your kitchen, your hands, your husband and sometimes the cat covered in a watery magenta hue. There’s just no ‘clean’ way of doing down beets.
First, there’s topping them - to keep them from ‘bleeding’ in the cooking water, cut all the green stuff off except for a couple of inches of stalk and leave the roots on. For me, that means using the old-fashioned knife-against-the-thumb action, resulting in digits that looked like they’ve been whacked with a cudgel.
Then, you have to boil the little nuggets. All the recipes say that a half-hour should do it, but I’ve never been able to get it done in less than about an hour. I like ’em cooked, not crunchy. I find listening to the SuperTramp’s Breakfast in America album plus a couple of Fleetwood Mac songs times out about right. (Yes, nothing like rocking it to the oldies…)
I love the way the outer jacket slides off the cooked beet, and the satisfying plop of the rich dark chunks as they hit the bottom of the white-hot pint jar.
Unlike my mother, who I swear had all her pickling recipes etched into her consciousness, I always have to hunt down the tried-and-true ratio of vinegar and sugar and water to make a perfect brine. (It’s two and a half to one to one). More boiling, and then pour the scalding hot result over the now-packed beets. Add a couple of whole cloves to each pint, and presto, you get to boil some more!
Canning root vegetables to make them seal (and avoid really nasty things like botulism) demands a full half-hour with the pints submerged in super-heated water. Then, there’s the fun of extracting them without giving myself third degree burns.
Finally, after hearing the satisfying ‘pop’ of the lids sealing down, and wiping the last vestiges of pinky-purple pulp from every nook and cranny, I relaxed, happy in the knowledge that we’ll be chowing down on our pickled lovelies all winter long.