Crunchy Hot Beets

Foreword: 

Living alone I have no need to be making huge batches of anything let alone these crunchy hot beets and given that I enjoy cooking and find it therapeutic, I’m not extremely anal when it comes to measuring portions. I also work with what I have at hand. For example in this recipe I had to know that I had the vessels to use. In short, when I cook I’m flying by the seat of my pants. So knowing that I had
five or six 250 ml preserve jars I decided on the amount of ingredients as I went along. 

Ingredients:

Beets, about 1 litre 

Chili peppers dried – 4 broken 

Garlic – six cloves, I’ve come to love pink or Lautrec Garlic 

Vinegar – Plain white or Apple Cider 300 ml 

Water – 1 (one) litre 

Vessels

 Five (5) 250 ml preserve jars with lids 

Putting it Together 

Into one large measuring cup, mine is two litres, place the prepared ingredient’s below.

Peel and cut your beets into coarse pieces with the largest possible size being a cube of about a centimetre. I do a mix of cubes and smaller strips, the smaller more easily become infused with the taste of the garlic and peppers.

Lautrec garlic mentioned above has a pink coloured outer skin and has a wonderful and rich flavour the first time I purchased this pink garlic was about this time last year and it had a providence of Spain. Over the summer I found locally produced pink garlic, and while it is a little more expensive it’s definitely worth every penny. Clean six cloves, and cut them into coarse pieces. One such pink clove should render you about a dozen wonderful small chunks. 

Mix the beets and the garlic well in order to make the distribution of the garlic pieces as equal as possible. 

Mix the water, vinegar and crushed chili peppers in a pot, and bring this mixture to a boil. 

Pour the boiling concoction over your beets and garlic. Cover it with a kitchen towel and let the mixture return to room temperature. 

Empty the mixture through strainer and ensure to preserve the liquid in another vessel. 

Spoon your beets, chili pepper and garlic pieces into your containers, in equal portions. In my case I filled five (5)  250 ml glass containers with the mixture.

Top off each of your containers with the fluid you saved. 

Close your containers and put them in the fridge for at least a day. I’m experiment but these portions should keep for up to two weeks without any problems if refrigerated, though they may keep longer.

Health Benefits

This little concoction contains a great deal of positive. The beets here remain primarily in a raw form and raw beets contain more vitamins, minerals and antioxidants than cooked beets. Here I will just send you to our wonderful free encyclopedia.

Then there is the garlic... which for many cultures is used in the culinary process...Here is where you can learn more about the wonderful bulb.

Recycle, Re-purpose, Re-use

Not long ago I poached eggs for the first time in my life. In the household I grew up in we had three types of eggs: boiled, fried and scrambled. I went on to make omelettes with a variety of ingredients. My first poached eggs were just a short while ago. Given that one of the magic ingredients in poaching eggs is vinegar, I'm thinking of using the fluids I have left over after I finish eating my crunchy hot beets. I will report back about that culinary experiment. I think a poached egg would look wonderful in red...


Vasyl Pawlowsky 

Independent Consultant