How To Pickle Beets, part 2

August 5, 2009

The Beets are finally done! I meant to take photos of the whole process but I forgot too. It was hot, I was nervous, and I forgot.

It wasn't as hard as I had thought it would be. Since I had prepared the beets on Saturday all we had to do was prepare the jars, make the pickle solution and put them in the canner. I had originally planned on doing it in the kitchen that is in my basement (my house actually has 2 kitchens), but one of my sister's friends wanted to help and she brought her daughter with her so we ended up doing it on the back patio on the BBQ side burner. Im not so sure that was the right thing to do, I had a hard time regulating the pressure, it kept getting to high and I had to turn off the burner and let the pressure go down and then turn it back on so next time I will be doing it on the stove in the basement kitchen. I can't do it on the stove in the main kitchen because its a ceramic top and the manufacturer does not advise canning on it.

Anyway, here is a photo of my pressure canner. Its a 23 quart Presto we bought from Amazon.com this winter. We got a great deal on it, less then $80.00 with the shipping.

And here is the final result, 19 1/2 pints of pickled beets. I gave a couple to Laura's friend and sent a few back to Bellingham with Laura for our grandmother.

The only people in my home that actually like these things are my mother and sister so these should last all winter. When my mom gets home this fall, we are going to try to buy a couple bushels of Tomatos (if they are still around) at the Farmer's Market and make up some salsa and stuff like that. I might try making regular pickles now since I got a feel for how the canner works and they can be water-bathed instead of pressure canned (which I think will be easier).

How to prepare to Pickle beets, part 1

August 2, 2009

My sister and I are pickling the beets tommarrow. We have never done this before but I started reading the directions and recipes and decided to go ahead with the prep work. Good thing I did, it took me 5 hours on my feet to get the beets prepared.

The photo above is after I had picked, trimmed and washed them. I filled up a 5 gallon bucket with all the beets. My grandmother (whom is in her 80's) did make a point of calling me to let me know that if I left a bit of the stems on and the root tail that they wouldn't bleed. I would have to say that maybe they wouldn't bleed so much, because they were still on the messy side.

After scrubbing all the dirt off, I blanched them in boiling salted water. Now, this is not like blanching a tomato or green beans...nonono. These things have to be boiled anywhere between 15 to 20 minutes before the skins will come off easily. Of course, it took me a few batches to figure that out. The first few batches were of the larger beets and I didn't blanch them long enough so then I had to figure out a different way to skin the buggers, I tried a veggie peeler, a small knife, even used a pair of the potato skinning gloves. It was frustrating because, while the skins were holding on for dear life, the beets were like trying to hold onto a bar of wet soap. Finally, I figured out that I needed to blanch them a bit longer and then after a brief dunk in an ice water bath (dont let them get too cool) the skins would come off easily under running water.

After blanching and skinning, I sorted them by size (as you can see, they were bleeding all over the place.)

Finally, I fully cooked them in my new electric Pressure cooker (not to be confused with my Pressure canner). I love my Cuisinart Pressure Cooker. I had purchased it with some of my garage sale bootie. A bit off topic here, but I have to say that if you can get one of these go for it. BUT, buy the Cuisinart (I got mine at Bed, Bath and Beyond). I had previously owned 2 others that were purchased off of QVC. The first one had to be sent back after about 9 months of use, and the second one died shortly after the warrantly expired. I had problems with both all along.

Back to the subject at hand. I cooked the beets in the Pressure cooker for about 15 minutes per batch and at this point I had 3 batches.

Meanwhile, while I was preparing the beets, the air-conditioner died on us. We didn't even realize it until later in the evening because we had left to attend a wedding. When we got back, the house was hotter then it was outside, and my poor dear sweet sister-in-law who was watching Colby for us, and Colby as well, were dying from the heat. Best I can figure is it went out sometime between 4 and 5 in the afternoon. You can imagine how tortureous sleeping last night was. Then, when I got up this morning the heater was on and I had a hard time getting it to shut off. I ended up calling the repair guy out and long story short (yeah, too late I know) $628.00 later we can live in our house again.

The Green Beans

Well...

The weather finally warmed up enough for me to start seriously thinking about the garden. I usually have a small one every year but this year I decided to plant more green beans because my parents gave me a Presto Pressure Canner this winter and I want to can things like the green beans and maybe a few beets too.

I started 4 varieties of green beans and 2 types of squash inside in those Jiffy Pot green house thingys.

I have 2 types of Pole beans, Blue Lake and Kentucky Blue, 2 types of Bush beans, Tenderette and Blue Lake, as well as Burgess Buttercup squash and Table King bush Acorn squash.

And then, typical of my garden, the weeds popped up!

Besides the weeds, green beans, squash and beets I will have a small patch of salad greens and I also purchased 6 tomato plants from Gurney's this year, they looked pitiful when they arrived but are starting to perk up.

I am hoping to home can enough green beans and tomato sauce and salsa to get through the winter and thus, not have to purchase those items. The beets are for my mom and sister, they like them for some reason (I personally think they taste like dirt. )

Leah