Pickled Red Beets - ☺♥

My mother used to make this product about once a year, and serve it chilled at picnics and at general family snacking events. I decided to make them now, many years later, for the first time, though I was never thrilled about the taste. Well ... That sure has changed! These rascals are delicious.

If you can the jars of pickled beets under boiling water for 30 minutes, after making them in this recipe, then you can store the jars in a pantry, and use them whenever you want for up to a year. Otherwise, without canning, refrigerate the jars of pickled beets and use them within two to three weeks. Note that you can easily scale back this recipe and make only one or two quart jars of pickled red beets.

The only tricky part of this recipe is getting the right amount of water from boiling the beet slices, together with the other listed brine ingredients, and having enough, but not much excess, to fill the canning jars that contain the beet slices and hard boiled eggs. The idea is you don't want the brine to be weak or to run out of it before the canning jars are filled to the neck of each jar.

Ingredients:

5 pounds of fresh, small to medium size red beets, peeled and cut into 1/4" thick slices

1 cup of white sugar

1 1/2 tsp. of pickling or sea salt

1 pint of white vinegar (5% acidity)

1 tbsp. of whole cloves

5, one quart canning jars

10 whole hard boiled eggs, shells removed

Directions:

Place the beet slices in a 2 gallon pot with water to cover them.

Bring to a low boil, and cook until the beet slices are tender, about 15 minutes.

Use a slotted spoon to remove the beet slices from the pot and put them into the canning jars, placing two hard boiled eggs between beet slices in each canning jar. A canning jar funnel makes this task easy, so if you don't have one then think about buying one. They are useful in many different situations to dispense food into canning jars without spillage.

Set the pot of hot beet water aside.

Combine the sugar, 5 cups of the beet water, the vinegar, and the salt in a two quart saucepan and bring the mixture to a rapid boil.

Pour that hot brine over the beet slices and eggs in the one quart canning jars, to within 3/4" of the top of each jar, and screw on the lids.

Refrigerate the pickled beets after the canning jars have sealed and use the contents within two to three weeks. Or you may decide to can the pickled beets and store them for up to a year in a food pantry.

Enjoy!