Pickled beets
Sweet-sour beet slices with cinnamon and clove — the pickle that makes a winter plate look like something.
Makes
About 8 × 500 ml (pint) jars
Active time
1¼ hours
Total
2½ hours, plus 12–24 hours cooling
Photo Dag Endresen on Flickr · CC BY 2.0
Before you start
What keeps this jar safe
- Beets are a low-acid vegetable; only the 1 L of 5% vinegar to 500 ml of water makes them a boiling-water job. Never add more water or beet cooking liquid to the brine.
- Discard the water the beets were cooked in — the recipe is written with fresh water in the pickling liquid.
- The 30 minutes is longer than most pickles because beet slices are dense; do not shorten it for small jars.
- Onions are the only extra the recipe allows; stick to the amount given or leave them out.
This follows NCHFP: Pickled Beets. Quantities, acid and times are theirs; do not scale the vegetables without scaling everything, and do not change the vinegar, lemon juice or processing time.
Ingredients
- 3.2 kg (7 lb) beets, 5–6 cm (2–2½ inches) across
- 1 L (4 cups) vinegar (5%)
- 7 ml (1½ teaspoons) canning or pickling salt
- 400 g (2 cups) sugar
- 500 ml (2 cups) fresh water
- 2 cinnamon sticks
- 12 whole cloves
- 4–6 small onions, 5–6 cm across, optional
Processing
- Jars
- 500 ml (pint) or 1 L (quart) — same time
- Headspace
- 1.25 cm (½ inch)
- Time at 0–300 m (0–1,000 ft)
- 30 min
- Higher up
- Both sizes: 35 min at 300–900 m (1,001–3,000 ft), 40 min at 900–1,800 m (3,001–6,000 ft), 45 min above 1,800 m (6,000 ft).
Method
- 1
Cut the beet tops off leaving 2.5 cm (1 inch) of stem, and leave the root on, so they do not bleed their colour while cooking. Scrub them well — a child with a vegetable brush is ideal — and sort by size.
- 2
Cover beets of a similar size with boiling water and cook until tender, about 25–30 minutes. Drain and throw the cooking water away — it does not go in the jars. Let the beets cool enough to handle, trim roots and stems, slip the skins off with your thumbs and slice 6 mm (¼ inch) thick. Peel and thinly slice the onions.
- 3
Set 8 washed 500 ml jars to heat in the canner and wash the lids.
- 4
Combine the vinegar, salt, sugar and 500 ml fresh water in a large pot. Tie the cinnamon and cloves in a square of cloth and drop it in. Bring to a boil, add the beets and onions and simmer 5 minutes. Fish out the spice bag.
- 5
Fill the hot jars with beets and onions, leaving 1.25 cm (½ inch) headspace, then ladle in the hot liquid to the same headspace. Free bubbles with a chopstick, wipe the rims, centre the lids and screw the bands on fingertip-tight.
- 6
Lower into the canner with at least 5 cm (2 inches) of water over the lids, bring to a full rolling boil and process 30 minutes for 500 ml or 1 L jars at 0–300 m.
- 7
Turn off the heat, uncover, wait 5 minutes and lift the jars onto a towel. Leave 12–24 hours, check the seals, and wipe the jars — beet juice stains.
Keeps: 12–18 months in a cool dark cupboard. Refrigerate after opening and eat within a month.
Variations: Pickled whole baby beets: use beets 2.5–4 cm (1–1½ inches) across and pack them whole instead of sliced, same brine and the same 30 minutes. Onions may be left out.
Tested source: NCHFP: Pickled Beets. Checked October 2026. If a jar did not seal, refrigerate it and use it within a few days. Never taste anything from a jar that is bulging, leaking, spurting or smells wrong — when in doubt, throw it out without tasting.
The crop
Beets: when to pick, how to store, what else to make →
Pickled beets are what most people want from a beet glut, and they are safely water-bath canned because the tested recipes (NCHFP, Bernardin) carry enough 5% vinegar to bring the jar well under pH 4.6 — 30 minutes in a boiling-water canner for 500 ml jars. Plain beets are another matter: they are low-acid and must be pressure-canned, 30 minutes for 500 ml and 35 for litres at 10 lb weighted gauge, with the jars filled with fresh boiling water rather than the red cooking liquid. Never water-bath plain beets. Cooked beets freeze well sliced or cubed; raw beets do not. Beet greens are treated like spinach — blanch 2 minutes, squeeze, freeze.