How to Pickle Beets and Live to Tell About It.

Illustration: MVL

Botulism. It was the paralyzing fear instilled in me by my mother, and her mother, whose second cousin twice removed went blind from eating a jar of dilly beans. Or was it from chickenpox? She never was quite sure. But either way, I grew up fairly certain I’d die a horrible death from a home preserved canned good. 

My mother worked for the county extension service as a master food preserver. To this day, I can’t imagine she isn’t single-handedly responsible for a national decline in the practice of home canning. County fairs everywhere must be sitting on boxes of unawarded ribbons for lack of entries. 

When I moved to North Carolina in my thirties, I planted a small garden which produced far too many pole beans to count, and more zucchini than my neighbors would politely accept. That year I filled my freezer with so many quart sized Ziploc bags of vegetables it was nearly impossible to find the vodka. And still, I stayed away from canning. Because on the off chance I could survive the silent, deadly toxin that lurked within those jars, there would be the lingering guilt of having killed my dinner guests.

There’s an old saying, “When the student is ready, the teacher appears.” Well, it was late spring when I met a buoyant, eighty-year-old farmer’s wife named Phylis Carrigan. She invited me to come for a visit while she pickled up some beets. When I arrived, there were steaming hot beets everywhere. They filled both sides of her sink, plus three giant bowls on a countertop that only had room enough for two. She shoved a measuring cup into my hand and instructed me on how to make the pickle brine while she slid the skins off the boiled beets. 

There was nothing scientific about it. She’d been preserving foods all her life and she simply followed the rules of common sense. Hot clean jars, boiled beets, pickle brine, careful with the lids, rings on but not too tight, submerge in water and boil till the antique pressure pot begins to spit and sputter. “So that’s it?!” I asked? “That’s it,” said Phylis. I hugged her neck and thought I might just cry. She was proof you could be a home canner and live at least eighty years to tell about it. In a single afternoon she erased a lifetime of my irrational fear.

There’s nothing quite as satisfying as hearing twenty jars of pickled beets pop and ping when the lids seal. I helped Phylis carry the cooled jars down into her basement. Her shelves were stacked with everything she needed for at least two winters. She sent me home with five quart jars of my own and a passion to keep making more. 

Click here to download my pickled beet recipe. Relax and just follow the directions. You’ve got this!