Description
These partially dehydrated smoked beets have a funky concentrated flavor, and a candy-like texture. Use them for salads and garnishes. The best part – they wont bleed all over your plate and make a mess of your presentation.
Ingredients
2 1/2 lbs beets (about 5 large ones)
8 cups white vinegar (or red wine vinegar)
3 cups water
2 cups sugar
1/4 cup salt
1/4 cup peppercorns
1 bunch dill
Instructions
Combine all ingredients except the beets in a pot that will fit the beets tightly. Bring to a boil and dissolve the sugar and salt. Add the beets, cover and simmer on low for 30-90 minutes depending on the size until the beets are fork tender.
Transfer the beets to a large ziplock bag, add a couple ladlefuls of the cooking liquid and submerge the bag in ice water. Keeping the zipper part out, open a corner, push the rest of the bag under the water to push out the air, and reseal.
When the beets are cooled, peel them and break them into irregular 1 inch pieces by hand.
Preheat your Traeger, or another smoker (or oven) to 200 F (see note below).
Lay the beets out on a sheet of tinfoil. Transfer to the smoker (or oven) and poke holes in the tinfoil to allow the smoke to penetrate it. Cook at 200 for 3 1/2 hours or until the beets are smokey, and dry but not hard.
Notes
SMOKER TEMPS: Some smokers, like my Traeger, have a temperature setting of 180 F and 225 F so I spend half the time at 180 F and the other half at 225 F for an average temperature of 200 F.
METHOD VARIATION: If you have heat-proof vacuum seal bags/ sous vide bags, go ahead and scale the brine ingredients by 1/4 and cook the beets with the liquid in the sous vide bags.
YOU WILL HAVE EXTRA BRINE: This recipe (without sous vide bags) will result in a lot of extra vinegar solution. You could save this for your next batch of demi-dehydrated beets or use it to pickle carrots, little tokyo turnips, onions, cauliflower, or anything else you want that would look nice with a pink hue added.