Polish grated beetroot in jars: a dinner side ready in five minutes
Beetroots boiled in their skins, grated, seasoned with apple, onion, vinegar and sugar, pasteurised in small jars. In winter you open a jar, warm it with a spoon of butter or sour cream, and have beetroot for your cutlet in five minutes. A kilo of beetroot makes three jars, and the colour stays ruby thanks to the acid from the lemon and vinegar.
Your own work in that: 45 min.
- Beetroot boiling 60 min
- Grating and seasoning 30 min
- Jars 15 min
- Pasteurising 25 min
Step by step
0 / 7 doneBoil the beetroot in their skins
Scrub the beetroot; don't peel or trim the tails, so they keep their juice and colour. Cover with water and boil 50–60 minutes, until a knife slides in without resistance. Drain and cover with cold water.
Ingredients: 2000 g beetroot · 2 pcs apples · 2 pcs onions · 3 tbsp sugar · 4 tbsp spirit vinegar, 10 % · 1 pcs lemon, juice · 2 tsp salt · ½ tsp black pepper · ½ tsp ground allspice
TipBeetroot of similar size cook evenly. Halve large ones only after cooking, not before.
In their skins, an hour, until tenderPeel
Peel the cooled beetroot by rubbing the skin off with a paper towel or a small knife; after boiling it comes away effortlessly. Gloves save you two days of pink hands.
The skin rubs off with a towelGrate with apple and onion
Grate the beetroot on the coarse side, peel and grate the apples the same way, chop the onion very finely. Put everything in a large pot.
Beetroot and apple coarse, onion fineSeason and heat
Add the sugar, vinegar, lemon juice, salt, pepper and allspice. Heat, stirring, 10 minutes, until piping hot and the onion has softened. Taste: it should be sweet-and-sour, more pronounced than you'd eat straight away, because it mellows in the jar.
TipThe acid from the lemon and vinegar fixes the ruby colour. Without it, beetroot turns brown in pasteurising.
Sweet-and-sour, hot, glossyFill the jars
Spoon the hot beetroot into scalded 300–400 ml jars, pressing down with the spoon so no air pockets remain, to 1.5 cm from the rim. Wipe the rims, screw on the lids.
Pressed down, no airPasteurise
Stand the jars in a pot on a cloth, add hot water to three-quarters of their height and pasteurise 25 minutes from the boil. Lift out, turn upside down for 10 minutes. Keep the cooled jars in the fridge for up to 2 months; for longer, freeze the beetroot in portions in containers (up to a year). Do not store them in the pantry: beetroot is a low-acid vegetable, this amount of vinegar and lemon does not give a tested acidity, and home pasteurising at 100°C does not destroy botulism spores.
Twenty-five minutes from the boilIn winter: for dinner
Warm the contents of a jar in a pan with a spoon of butter, finish with a spoon of sour cream or grated horseradish. With a cutlet, a roast, fish. An opened jar keeps 5 days in the fridge.
Warmed with butter, ready in five minutes
Before you start
With horseradish
3 spoons of grated horseradish from a jar into the pot: sharper beetroot, a ready-made beetroot and horseradish relish for cold cuts and eggs.
Thickened
In winter, after warming, sprinkle with a teaspoon of flour and stir a minute: the classic thickened beetroot, denser.
Roasted instead of boiled
An hour at 200 °C in foil instead of boiling: sweeter, more intense, less watery. The rest unchanged.