A Recipe for Pickled Beets

I’ve been thinking a lot about my blog lately and it’s purpose. Is it a window into my career? Is a place for me to talk about the business of photography to help my fellow colleagues? Should I post personal work? Does it have to be just that? Can it be more? Should it be more? How much more?

I’m hesitant to talk about other photographer’s work here. I also don’t want to dilute the blog with ever single thing I stumble across. So, I’ve started a tumblr blog to keep track of things I’ve seen that inspire me and post random stuff that falls outside the focus of this blog.

So, what’s with the recipe for pickled beets? Well, I love food, a lot. I love to eat, cook, and try new things almost as much as I like shooting pictures of food. To make a little photography project of my love for food, I’ve started enlisting the help of chef friends and food stylists to create tasty images with recipes. I’m putting it here in hopes that someday, it might become a cookbook and/or an iPad App.

Let’s start with something simple. This delicious snack was created and styled by Kevin Ward. It doesn’t take much to do yourself and it’s quite tasty if you like the tang of pickling spices and vinegar. Here’s Kevin’s recipe:

Pickled Beets:

2 lb. Beets
3/4c Water
2c Cider Vinegar
1c Sugar
1 Cinnamon Stick
1 tsp Mustard Seed
1tsp Peppercorn
1/2 tsp whole Allspice
1/2 tsp whole Cloves
1 tsp Salt

Place Beets in a saucepan and cover with salted water. Simmer Beets until tender when pierced with a knife, about 30 minutes. Drain and let cool. When beets are cool enough to handle, wearing rubber gloves (unless you like your hands stained beet red for a week) rub the outer skin off the beet. Trim the stems and cut beets into 1 1/2” cubes.

Set aside.

In a non-reactive pot, bring vinegar, water, sugar, and spices to a boil, lower heat and let simmer for 5 minutes. Pour hot pickling liquid over beets and allow to pickle for at least 24 hours.
Beets should last about 2 weeks covered in the refrigerator (If you’re like us, they wont last 2 days)

You can also serve with charcuterie like salami, prosciutto, or shoulder bacon (below) for a mouthwatering taste explosion.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 2nd, 2011 at 10:49 am and is filed under Featured, Recipes and tagged with bread, chevre, food photography, Kevin Ward, olives, pickled beets, recipe. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.