Red beet
I’ve always liked to eat red beets. Especially during wintertime, when our storage would be loaded with pickles of all sorts – among them there were jars of pickled red beets, too. My favorite way of eating them would be together with green salad and sweet corn/cooked beans. Well, until last summer at least, when I discovered this recipe of grated beets and carrots: I had no idea raw beets tasted so delicious paired with a good vinaigrette!
However, after more than half a year of eating them raw, I made a jar of pickled beets today. I’ll show you how I prepare them.
PICKLED RED BEET
red beets
water
salt
vinegar (I use apple vinegar)
cumin seeds
a sterilized jar with lid
1. Peel the beets, wash them and slice thinly (1mm-2mm).
2. Place the slices in a steamer pot and cook until softened (not too much). It usually takes about 45 minutes, more or less. The cumin seeds go to the lower pot (water), so that the steam provides the beets with their aroma.
3. Once cooked, transfer the beets into a sterilized jar. Add vinegar and salt (according to taste) to the remaining liquid, stir and pour over beet slices. Make sure that cumin seeds get inside the jar, too. Cumin is the best spice to pair with red beets.
4. Seal the jar and pasteurize in the oven. Allow to cool, then store in the fridge (or in a dark, cold storage, if you have one).
Red beet juice that drips into the lower pot, colors the water ruby-to-dark red. Before adding cumin seeds, I took some of the colored water and used it for the dessert we had after lunch – egg flan. I added a few tablespoons to the milk, for some color effect. The flan mixture looked pink before cooking, but turned back to yellow after and I don’t understand, why did the pink nuance get lost.
Flan itself, however, tasted great. I served it with maple syrup that I mixed with some red colored water.
CINNAMON SCENTED EGG FLAN WITH RED MAPLE SYRUP
makes 2 flans
350ml milk
2 cinnamon sticks
3 large eggs
65g blond cane sugar
4Tbsp water from cooking red beets (try adding more for a better colour effect, if you like)
a little oil for the ramekins
maple syrup
a little more water from cooking red beets
1. Boil milk with cinnamon sticks and let infuse for about half an hour. Afterwards, discard the sticks.
2. Beat the eggs with sugar, then add cinnamon scented milk and red water. Stir again, then using a spoon, try to remove as much of foam (that forms on the surface of the mixture through mixing) as possible.
3. Oil two flan ramekins and fill them up with the egg-y mixture. Transfer the ramekins into a heat-proof pan, filled with water as high as the half of the ramekin height, and place in the oven. You can cover the ramekins with foil so that the surface of the flan doesn’t burn while cooking.
4. Cook at 140-150ºC for about an hour – check if it’s done by inserting a toothpick into the flan. If it comes out clean, then it’s cooked.
5. Let cool completely before unmoulding. Serve with red-colored maple syrup.
Related posts:
beets are a favorite pickled vegetable of mine.
i remember my mother always had a bowl of beets in the fridge ready to eat with a main meal