How to make pickled beetroot

Cooking it without losing the colour

Beetroot pigment — betanin — is water-soluble and leaches out readily wherever the skin is broken. A beetroot peeled and cut before boiling gives a pink pan of water and a pale vegetable.

So beetroot is cooked whole and unpeeled, with the root tail intact and the leaves trimmed to a couple of centimetres above the crown rather than cut flush. Every cut is a place for colour to escape.

Roasting in foil loses even less, concentrates the flavour and is generally better than boiling, though it takes longer. Either way the skins slip off easily once cooked, which is why peeling first is unnecessary.

The method

Cook, peel, slice, brine. FoodHQ does not publish acidity figures, brine strengths or keeping times, and does not say which pickles are safe unrefrigerated. Those are safety numbers set by a food safety authority; in the UK the Food Standards Agency is the authority. Use a recipe from it or from a body with the same standing, and treat this page as the explanation of what the method is doing.

1. Trim the leaves to about two centimetres above the crown and leave the root tail on. Do not peel and do not cut.
2. Scrub the beetroot and either boil it whole until tender — forty minutes to over an hour depending on size — or wrap in foil and roast.
3. Cool until you can handle them, then rub the skins off with your fingers or a cloth. Wear gloves unless you want purple hands.
4. Slice, dice or quarter, and pack into clean jars.
5. Warm vinegar with sugar, salt and whole spices — coriander seed, black peppercorns, bay, cloves, a strip of orange zest — until dissolved.
6. Pour the warm brine over to cover, seal with vinegar-proof lids, and leave for a week or two before eating.

Variations

• Beetroot and horseradish, grated in, which is the Eastern European pairing and excellent with cold beef.
• Beetroot and orange, with zest in the brine.
• Beetroot and caraway or dill, both traditional.
• Beetroot and ginger, sliced fresh ginger in the jar.
• Sweet pickled beetroot, with considerably more sugar, which is the traditional British salad version.
• With balsamic, which deepens the colour and the sweetness.
• Golden or chioggia beetroot, which do not bleed and look striking, though they lose the point of the colour.

Notes

Do not peel first

Every cut surface leaks colour into the cooking water.

Leave the tail on

And trim the leaves above the crown rather than flush.

Roasting

Loses less colour and concentrates the flavour. Wrap each beetroot in foil.

Gloves

Beetroot stains hands for a day and clothes permanently.

What it goes with

Cold beef, mackerel, herring, hard cheese, and in a ploughman's.

Common questions