These beautiful little gems are perfect for Easter, but I like to make them anytime (especially when our backyard chicks have been extra productive). Eggs are my favourite 4pm snack!
I have the world's laziest and most economical recipe for Beet Pickled Eggs.
1. Save the brine from your favourite pickles. Leftover pickle brine is so good in many applications! Basically anytime a recipe calls for vinegar, you can use pickle juice. Marinate matchstick carrots or onion slivers for handy sandwich garnishes, splash over potatoes, or slip a little into your Bloody Mary. And speaking of Bloody Mary, there are many so many pickle-based cocktails!
2. Save your beet skins! I don't usually peel my veggies. I want to pretend it's because all the nutrients are in the skins (which is true) but honestly I'm just too lazy. Beet skins are a little too tough for me though, so I whenever I roast beets, I throw the peels into my Vitamix with a little water. The colour is not only pretty, but pretty beet-y!
3. Combine pickle brine with your beet peel juice and there you have it: instant beet pickle brine for your eggs. And you still have your whole beet for something else.
To pickle your eggs, you'll first need to boil them. Apparently there are a million ways to boil eggs out there, but here's the method that always works for me.
- Bring a pot of water to a boil.
- Gently lower the eggs into the boiling water.
- Now set your timer. I like jammy eggs, so I usually set my timer for 6 minutes. If my eggs just came out of the fridge, I make it 7 minutes. For the purpose of devilled eggs, we need our eggs hard-boiled. That takes 9-10 minutes.
- Remove the eggs and immediately run them under cool water.
Once the eggs are completely cool, put them into the (also cool) beet-pickle juice. Do not put them in hot or even warm. The difference in temperatures will make your egg whites rubbery. Ick!
For beet pickled eggs, around 8-10 hours in the fridge is sufficient. If you let them over-marinate, the yolks will also turn pink.
Sometimes, I love them just like that, with a little salt sprinkled on top. To devil your eggs, halve them, and gently scoop out the yolks. Since the eggs have been pickled, there's no need to add vinegar. Just mash the yolks with a little mayo, a tiny bit of mustard, and a teeny bit of salt. The brine will have already salted the eggs, so be careful when seasoning.
⬆️ My beet juice lasts in the fridge approximately 3 days.
There are so many ways to enjoy the beet skin juice. You could blend the juice with some ginger and have a healthy drink. You could blend the juice with a frozen banana and a little plant milk and have a vegan smoothy. Sometimes I add the beet juice to my oatmeal or chia seed pudding! Other times, I make a roasted beet hummus. That's for another post!
I also never throw away any vegetable skins or trimmings. Carrot nubs, hairy onion ends, garlic skins, celery bottoms, the so-awkward-to-cut tops of bell peppers, herb stalks...I save them all in a bag, freeze them, and when the bag is full, it's time to make stock. It's just a 30 minute simmer with enough water to cover. Once strained, you can freeze the stock and be ready for anything! Never pay for stock again 👍
