Christmas Calendar 2015 - Christmas pickled beetroot

Beetroot is one of my favourite vegetable, which I like to have a juice with beetroot, part of oven baked root vegetables or as pickled beetroot.

One of my good colleagues has some farm land, where he grows various vegetable for own use as well as sharing some of the surplus with us his colleagues.
So when I asked, if he could share some beetroots with me, I did not get a little plastic bags with 10-15 beetroots. No I got a feeding bag 1/3 full with beetroots, carrots, pastinac and onions :-)






So one Autumn evening I turned my little kitchen into pickled beetroot creation place. I boiled 1½ kg beetroot at the time. The boiling time depends on the size of beetroot, so everything between 20-50 minutes, so check after 20 minutes cooking with a kitchen knife, if the beetroot is firm or soft.

When the beetroot is boiled, place them in a big bowl or the kitchen sink, which is full of cold water. This will cracking the skin on the beetroot, so you push the skin off using your hands. Afterwards slice the beetroot in thinner slices. Now they are ready to be placed in the pickle liquid.

Beetroots will giving off plenty of colour, so consider to wear plastic gloves, when you remove the skin and slice the beetroot. Otherwise you hands can get a nice purple colour.

For the upcoming Christmas I created a special pickle liquid

Christmas pickled beetroot: 2-3 glasses

• 600-750 g boiled and sliced beetroot
• 500 g plain vinegar
• 250 g sugar
• ½ red chili
• 1 (organic) orange - peel & juice
• 1 cinnamon stick
• 2 star anise
• 5 black pepper corn

1. Add vinegar, sugar, orange peel 6 juice, cinnamon stick, chili, star anise and pepper corns in a cooking pot.
2. Bring the pickle liquid to the boil.
3. Add beetroot slices into the storage glasses, which has been sterilised with boiling water.
4. Pour the hot pickle liquid into the glass, covering all the beetroot slices.
5. Store the pickled beetroot as ambient temperature, when not opened. 
6. After opening a glass of pickled beetroot store the rest in the refrigerator.