The Impatient Chef Recipe: PA Dutch Red Beet Eggs

The Impatient Chef Recipe: Pennsylvania Dutch Red Beet Eggs

A Jar Full of Home (a quilt made by my grandmother is in the background)

I grew up in Central Pennsylvania.  Specifically, the Berks County / Lebanon County area.  There the Amish drove their "horse and buggies" on the country roads, the history was just about as long as you can get in the New World (unless you're Native American), and the Pennsylvania Dutch kept alive some of the old ways well into the 20th century. The one clarification that I have about the PA Dutch, of which I am one (on my mother's side of the family), is that we are not Dutch.  Our heritage is German.  The German language that my ancestors arrived with was frozen in time, and did not change in he ways that languages do where they are natively spoken.  Like the tortoises of the Galapagos, we evolved in isolation, and differently.  At least, the language did.  Over time, the irregular verbs disappeared, Deutsch (German) became Dietsch; tag (day) became dawg; and so on, and so forth.  I like to think of the PA Dutch language as Hillbilly German.  Most Americans did not know the Germans as Deutsch, but they knew the Dutch as the Dutch, so we became the Pennsylvania Dutch because the names Dietsch and Dutch were so close.

Around the time of World War II, the PA Dutch stopped passing down their Germanic language to their children.  Many of the more germanic sounding names became less so.  The anti-German sentiment of wartime America sent the PA Dutch into hiding from their heritage.  Now, there are less than 50,000 of us left.  I don't speak the language.  I know phrases, and individual words.  That's all.

One of the things I want to do as The Impatient Chef is to pass along some of my family recipes before they disappear.  This is the first.

The recipe goes thusly:

NOTE:  These are not pickled eggs.  You can not treat them as such.  They must be  refrigerated.

You will need a clean 1-gallon wide-mouthed jar.  Glass is necessary.  Do not use a plastic tub.  

Ingredients:

2 dozen eggs

4 good sized beets, peeled and sliced about 1/4” thick

2 1/4 quarts beet juice from boiling the beets (approx.)

2 cups white vinegar

1/2 cup sugar

1 tsp salt

We Got the Beets!

Tip on eggs:  fresh eggs do not peel easily.  Buy your eggs a few weeks in advance, and leave them in the refrigerator.  

The night before, hard boil the eggs.  A good method is to lay them in the pot first, and then cover them with water.  The water should be about an inch over the eggs.  Bring the pot to a boil without a lid.  When the water is at a rolling boil, cover the pot, and turn off the burner.  let the pot sit for 10 minutes.

After 10 minutes, drain the water, and refill with cold water, and drain again.  Repeat this for 3 to 4 cycles.  After that, refill the pot with water and add ice.  Use enough to bring the temperature of the water down rapidly.   After a few minutes, drain again, and refrigerate the eggs overnight. 

The next day, cook the beets as follows:

Sliced Up

In a large stock pot, boil the sliced beets in at least 3 quarts of water.  While they are boiling, peel the eggs, and cover them with water.  Boil the beets until they are tender.  Then, remove them from the pot, and let them cool.  While they are cooling, measure out 1 1/4 quarts of the beet juice.  Reserve the rest in a separate container.  Return the 1 1/4 quarts of beet juice to the pot (or a large mixing bowl), and stir in the vinegar and sugar until the sugar is dissolved.  Taste.  It should not be too bitter.  Add more vinegar and sugar if necessary in the same proportions.  

Ready to Pour.

In the gallon sized jar, layer the beets and eggs in the jar.  Top it off with the beet juice.  In the unlikely event that there is not enough, top it off with some of the reserved juice.  Refrigerate for a week before digging in.

Red through to the Yokes

Impatient Chef Tip:  For peeling too fresh eggs.  If your eggs have not aged for a few weeks in the fridge, and removing the shells also removes large chunks of the egg white, you can use a spoon to get the egg out of the shell.  Keep a bowl of water nearby.  Thoroughly crack the shell, and peel off the area of shell at the rounder end.  That's where the air bubble usually resides.  Carefully remove the exposed, thin membrane between the shell and the egg.  Wet the egg in the water, and inset the spoon between the membrane and the egg white.  Carefully work it around the egg.  Your eggs still won't be perfect, but you will lose much less of the whites, and it won't take hours.  

The source for this tip, as well as the egg cooking method, is Gaia Quay.