If pickled beets have turned up in a recipe or caught your eye at the store, here's what you need to use them with confidence and how to choose them, cook them, store them, what to substitute, and 6 recipes to try them in.

What are pickled beets?

Pickled beets are cooked beets steeped in a sweet-and-sour vinegar brine until they turn tangy and jewel-red, ready to eat straight from the jar.

The brine is built on vinegar and sugar with a little salt, plus warm spices like clove and allspice or a stick of cinnamon. That mix gives the beets their unmistakable agrodolce balance.

They are one of the oldest ways to keep beets through the winter. The acid preserves the roots and tames their earthy, almost mineral sweetness into something bright and sharp.

Most jars are sliced or whole baby beets, deep magenta and slick with brine. You can also pickle them at home in an afternoon, since the beets are cooked before they ever hit the brine.

How to Use It

Pickled beets are mostly an eat-as-is food. They work as a cold side or a sharp salad garnish, and nothing has to be cooked. Drain them, slice if needed, and they are ready to go.

Their tang and color do the most work in salads and sandwiches. Lay a few slices on Horseradish Beef Sandwiches for a sweet-sour crunch against the rich beef, or fold them into a Gingered Cabbage-Beet Salad where the vinegar plays off fresh ginger.

In Scandinavian cooking they are a fixture, served alongside pickled herring and cuts of pork or beef. They turn up in Ma's Can't "Beet" Our Herring in Wine Sauce Salad.

They also ride alongside Scandinavian Beef Patties with Beets & Cape, where their acidity cuts the fatty meat.

The beet-stained brine is useful too. Use a splash to pink-pickle hard-boiled eggs or onions, or whisk it into a vinaigrette for instant color and tang.

Just expect the color to travel. Pickled beets bleed magenta onto anything they touch, so add them last to a plated salad rather than tossing them through.

Pairing and Common Mistakes

Pickled beets want a rich or creamy, salty partner to balance their sweet-sour punch. They are classic with goat cheese and feta, with smoked or pickled fish, with cured pork and boiled eggs, and with sharp greens like arugula and watercress.

The most common mistake is letting them bleed into a dish you wanted to stay pale. Their juice stains potato salad and white cheese the moment it touches them, so keep them separate until serving or commit to an all-pink plate.

The other slip is treating their brine as plain vinegar. It is sweetened and spiced, so if you cook with it, account for the added sugar and pull back on any other sweetener.

Watch the salt and acid balance too. Because the beets are already tart and seasoned, a salad built on them needs little or no extra vinegar, and a light hand with salt.

Substitutes

If a recipe wants pickled beets and you only have plain cooked or canned beets, toss them with a quick brine of equal parts vinegar and water, sweetened with a spoonful of sugar and a pinch of salt, then chill for an hour.

It is not fully cured, but it gets close fast.

For the sweet-sour-and-earthy role without beets, pickled red cabbage or pickled turnips bring similar tang and color, though a different flavor. Roasted beets dressed with sherry vinegar cover the earthy-sweet side when you do not need the sharp pickle bite.

When you only need the magenta color and acidity, a splash of beet pickling brine or even pomegranate molasses stands in. Match the swap to what the dish needs most from the beets: the tang and earthy sweetness, or just the staining color.

Buying and Storage

Pickled beets come in jars and cans, sliced, diced, julienned, or as whole baby beets, usually near the canned vegetables or the pickles. Sliced is the easiest to use in salads and sandwiches; whole baby beets look best on a plate.

Check the label for sweetness, since brands range from lightly tart to candy-sweet. Harvard beets are a thicker, sweeter, clove-spiced style if you want them more like a relish.

An unopened jar keeps in the pantry for a year or more. Once opened, store the beets in their brine in the fridge with the lid tight, and they hold for about one to two weeks, sometimes longer because the acid slows spoilage.

Keep them submerged in the brine so they stay moist and tangy, and use a clean utensil each time. Home-pickled refrigerator beets are not heat-processed for shelf storage, so keep those chilled and eat them within a couple of weeks.

Quick facts

In Chinese

腌甜菜

British (UK) term

Pickled beets

en français

betteraves marinées

en español

remolacha en vinagre

Recipes using pickled beets

There are 6 recipes that contain this ingredient.

All 6 recipes