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Mild Pickled Beets
Pour over 2 qts. cooked beets the following: 2 C vinegar 2 C water 1 C sugar Salt Mrs. W. J. Dillon.
A church-supper quick pickle with no canning step at all — the brine goes over already-cooked beets and the jar goes in the refrigerator.
- The measurementsC is cups and qts. is quarts. The brine works out to 2 cups vinegar, 2 cups water, 1 cup sugar, which is enough to cover roughly 2 quarts of sliced or small whole beets in a wide jar or crock.
- Salt, unmeasuredThe original leaves it entirely to the cook. About 1 to 2 teaspoons in the roughly five cups of brine is in keeping with a mild pickle; taste the brine before pouring.
- Vinegar strengthCommercial distilled white and cider vinegar are standardly 5 percent acidity. Diluting the vinegar half and half with water is what makes this pickle mild, and it is also why the result is not acidic enough to be shelf-stable.
- This is not a canning recipeThere is no jar processing, no headspace, no boiling-water bath. Treat it as a refrigerator pickle: cool, cover, refrigerate, and use within two or three weeks. If you want beets for the pantry, follow a current tested canning recipe with measured acid.
- Cooking the beets firstBoil or roast them whole with an inch of stem and the root tail left on so they do not bleed out, then slip the skins and slice. Beets take 30 to 50 minutes boiling depending on size.
- Hot brine over warm beetsBring the vinegar, water, sugar and salt to a boil so the sugar dissolves, then pour it over the beets while both are still warm. They take up flavour far better than cold beets in cold brine.
- Waiting time and yieldGive them at least 24 hours before serving; three days is better. Two quarts of beets serves roughly 12 to 16 as a relish alongside a meat course.
- Optional spicingNothing is added here beyond sugar and salt, which is the point of "mild." A stick of cinnamon, a few whole cloves or a sliced onion in the jar is a common variation and will not affect keeping.
Sweet-sour beets in a vinegar and sugar brine are a durable item in American community cookbooks, and they commonly appear in the pickles-and-relishes chapter of parish and congregational collections. The appeal was practical: beets store well through the winter, the brine takes minutes, and a jar in the icebox stretches through several suppers. The word "mild" in the title distinguishes this from the more heavily spiced, full-strength-vinegar pickled beets meant for long pantry storage. The attribution to Mrs. W. J. Dillon follows the convention of these books, where recipes were credited to the contributor by her husband's initials, and the collective result served as both a fundraiser and an informal record of what the congregation actually cooked.