Pickled Beets Recipe with Dill

Enlarge Image Image Gallery The step-by-step instructions and 175 tasty recipes in “Put ’Em Up!” will have the most timid beginners filling their pantries and freezers with the preserved goodness of fresh produce in no time. Cover Courtesy Storey Publishing

Put ’Em Up! (Storey Publishing, 2010) offers your grandma’s traditional home-canning methods with a modern twist. Flavors are brighter, batch sizes are more flexible and up-to-date methods make the process safer and easier. An extensive techniques section allows you to think outside the box and learn a variety of food preservation methods such as freezing, drying and pickling. Create time-honored traditions such as apple butter to inventive new favorites such as figs in honey syrup or fennel confit. Even beginners who’ve never canned before can easily pick up preserving skills from this vibrant guide to canning. Try this Pickled Beets Recipe with Dill, an unexpectedly delicious flavor pairing, in this excerpt from the section “Beets.” 

You can purchase this book from the GRIT store: Put ’Em Up! 

More from Put ’Em Up!:

• Learn the Boiling Water-Bath Canning Method for Preserving Food
• Pickled Spicy Carrots Recipe 
• Granny's Chow-Chow Relish Recipe
• Refrigerator Zucchini Pickles Recipe 

Is there any vegetable more polarizing than beets? Whenever I use them in a cooking demonstration, they elicit the most powerful responses. “Oh, I adore beets” and “I can’t stand the sight of those things” pretty much divide the crowd down the middle, at least at the start. I credit a lot of that disdain to salad-bar beets — those curious, mushy, industrially processed things have given these rustic roots a bad name.

Fresh beets are another animal entirely. I grate them fresh into salads, roast them and layer them with goat cheese, or whir them into borscht. And, of course, I pickle them. No matter how you prepare them, the earthy, sweet flavor of fresh, locally grown beets wins over many a skeptic. And their colors are stunning. Red, gold, candy-cane striped, they’re all great. You can use any variety in these recipes.