Curses Alton Brown... your pickled beets have me BEET RED!

Well, our summer CSA is almost over, and we've moved on to many long storage/cold cellar items, and we are feeling the urge to do some canning.  I had picked up a bag of beets and with my busy schedule and our fall vacation, the beets were starting to go soft, so I knew we had to actually do something with them.  My husband did some straight canning, and I decided to do some pickled refrigerator beets.  This was my first attempt at pickled beets, so when I found a fairly easy version done by Alton Brown, I figured this had to be a good recipe.  He's like an expert, right?  Well... he may be an expert, but whoever put that recipe on foodnetwork.com wasn't paying attention! After reading some of the reviews I had a feeling this was not going to be as smooth as it should have been, but I was somewhat prepared.  One of the complaints was that there was not enough liquid, and another was complaining about the size of the mason jars.  I didn't pay too much attention to the second complaint but I now know it is true.
So, for this weeks blog, I'm going to take you through my adventure in making pickled beets using the Alton Brown recipe I found online.  I did not see the episode, which may have been helpful, but in the end they came out really tasty, so I do recommend the recipe.  Just a few things: make extra liquid, use pint size jars not quarts, roasting times can vary by a lot, and forget about the skins coming off easily...unless you have chef skills, peeling will be involved!  

Here is a link to the original recipe: http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/alton-brown/pickled-beets-recipe/index.html

Now here's what I used, and for the record I'm so disorganized and slow in the kitchen, the time quotes were at least double for me.. I'd like to say it's because I documented almost every step, but it's not!

The Lazy Diva's version of Alton Brown's Pickled Beets

STEP 1: ROASTING THE BEETS


 INGREDIENTS:

8-10 small to medium beets, cleaned

1-2 tablespoons of Truffle infused Olive Oil (Dipping Oil)

1-3 tablespoons of Rosemary infused Olive Oil (Dipping Oil)

 1 tablespoon of Rosemary and garlic bread dipping mix

 1 small onion
 

Bake at 400 degrees for 40 - 150 minutes... until they are tender.

My beets had been hanging around for awhile so I just left what little greenery and stem they had intact.

I had no shallots, or sprigs of Rosemary(the plant died :-( so I decided to use what I had which was Rosemary infused OO.)
Plus, I LOVE the TRUFFLE OLIVE OIL so I work that into a lot of my cooking that requires EVOO.

As I was preparing the beets I suddenly remembered we had bread dip herbs which contained Rosemary,
so I grabbed some of those too!

Instead of dirtying a bowl, I connected two sheets of aluminum foil together and brought the sides up. I placed the beets on the foil then poured olive oils and herbs on top and just rolled them around well to make sure they were all well coated.  Then I folded the foil up and around and tried to make it tight.  I did put a pan underneath to prevent leaking.

I did add extra foil to the top and put it in a little aluminum pan to prevent dripping.

Also used a pan when I realized how flexible the whole thing was..

While the beets were roasting I continued on to...


STEP TWO:
The Brine

INGREDIENTS:

1 1/2 cups Tarragon Wine Vinegar
1 1/2 cups Water
3/4 cups Sugar
1 tablespoon pickling salt


Add all the ingredients to a pot, stir and bring to a boil.  Then put aside.

STEP THREE:
Prepping the Roasted Beets

Now this is where the frustration started to increase.... the original recipe said to roast for 40 minutes.  After 40 my beets were still hard as a rock... so I put them back in.  I roasted them for almost 2 hours before they were somewhat tender.  My oven is usually pretty accurate, maybe it was the extra pans, I just don't know.

Then according to many recipes (not this one) the peels should just come right off.... WRONG!  So about half the peel would come off, then I'd have to take the knife to them. (After speaking of this complete frustration to one of my SILs who roasts beets frequently... she too has never had an easy post-roast peel removal.  Whatever the trick, we don't know it!)


STEP FOUR:
SLICING

Slice the beets, and grab another onion and slice that into strips too.

Apparently after the frustration of the beets... I forgot to take a photo of the sliced onions.
Oh well, I took way too many photos this time anyway...plus, you should be familiar with sliced onions.

STEP FIVE:
JARS
The original recipe calls for 2 QUART jars... I feel it should have been 2 PINT jars.  In the end I had one full Quart, one full pint, and enough liquid to fill half a pint jar... (and that was increasing the liquid by 50%).

So, pretty much all you need to do is layer the beets and onions, until you reach the top of the jar.  I went a bit onion light on mine, but it's all about what you like.  In the end you want a bit of  a gap at the top.

 

Then, pour in the liquid brine, once again leaving a gap at the top... and add the lids.  Store in the refrigerator.  For best taste, let sit for at least three days before consuming.

Notice the one on the left, I didn't have enough liquid...
I've just been shaking it up..and we've been eating that one first.

So that was my experience using the recipe from the Food Network site.  I was pretty tired and frustrated in the end, cursing Alton Brown or whoever typed it up and put it on the website, but in the end they did have a good flavor. If there is an episode of him actually making these, I may someday breakdown and watch it to see everything I did wrong.  I'm gearing up to try another round of pickled beets, but next time I'm going to boil them! 

Thanks as always for reading... now that I have a new laptop, hopefully I should be churning blogs out at a better pace!  HOPEFULLY!