This isn't so much a recipe as a rescue mission and a fun way for you to learn from my mistakes.
Today I have a challenge and I thought I'd share it with you. My adult kids have been raised on what we (ex-pat Brits) still call 'pickled beetroot'. A couple of days ago I cooked a pot of beets and last night I assembled the liquid in which I want them to sit. I let the liquid cool and dropped in the beets.
And it's wrong. I don't know what mistake I made, but the 'juice' is weak and too acid. I need to fix it, so I'll take the opportunity to show the way that I typically adapt when something disappoints me.
So, I'll start by telling you what I did to get into this mess and then I'll start contemplating the fix. I like to pickle my beets in large quantity and store it in kilner jars until I travel to my kids. I used about 20 beets, each one the size of a small tennis ball.
I like a sweet and sour 'juice' so I always start with a light sugar syrup. This time, making it up as I went along, I used about a pint and a half of water in a pan with about half a cup of soft brown sugar. I added some cardamom pods, a handful of black peppercorns (I HATE removing these later, so I tie them in a gauze cloth or sometimes in a coffee filter, stitched up!) and 3 bay leaves. I brought it all to a rolling boil, making sure the sugar was well dissolved and simmered on a low heat for about ten minutes. Then I let it cool a little before I added about 3 pints of white vinegar.
Usually, that works for me, but not this time. Did I forget the sugar completely? Add too little sugar? Was the vinegar a new brand that I won't use again? I simply don't know and the thing about being happy in the kitchen is that you can't let the 'why' matter too much. Too often, you'll never know what went wrong. A better use of your time is to always know that you can fix things.
So. let's think. I want the juice to be thicker and less acidic (but not noticeably sweet). Here are some of the things that I'm tempted to add:
a good aged balsamic vinegar (tends to be more sweet and less acidic, but can run spendy)
a good red wine, with the alcohol boiled off (criminal act, surely?)
thin puree of beets, baked with sugar and blended with some sparking wine. Oh, yes, let's try that.
[Pause here while I experiment - I'll report back soon}.
Well, that worked. Here's my rescue recipe:
Ingredients
6 beets (each sized like a large golf ball)
3 tablespoons soft brown sugar
sprinkle salt
1 cup sparkling wine, or water if you prefer
Take a sheet of aluminum foil, and rest the beets in the middle. Add the sugar and salt. Bake in a pre-heated oven at 350 degrees for 2 hours.
Set aside to cool.
Peel the cooked beets and put in a blender with the liquid. Blend until smooth and mix in the blended liquid with the too-acidic pickled beets. Shake to mix.
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