Colorful Pickled Eggs Recipe

A touch of beet juice gives pickled eggs a gorgeous purple color

I used to tend bar when I was in college in Gainesville, FL, on the edge of town, and many of my customers were farmers. For snacks with their drinks, it wasn’t potato chips or popcorn. It was pickled eggs.

When I moved north I forgot about this tasty snack. Fast forward 40 years. I now belong to a little dinner club, just four couples, and we get together about four times a year to cook an obscene amount of great food on a theme. We rotate hosting the events and over a decade, we’ve had a barbecue night (of course), Provencal, Irish, Indian, sausage, pizza, and many more, all with appropriate and copious quantities of drink. There are many such groups around the world, and they are a fine way to stretch your cooking skills. It’s a great concept and you should start a club like this. It helps if you all live near each other since the festivities can go into the wee hours until the bottles are emptied.

One member, Ellen Miller, served these pickled eggs, stained magenta with beet juice, and they were a huge hit. She got the recipe from a Chesapeake Collection – A Treasury of Recipes and Memorabilia from Maryland’s Eastern Shore by the Women’s Club of Denton, MD, and published in 1983 by Tidewater Publishers. The link above takes you to recent editions, but I don’t know if the recipe here is in them.

Like what you’re reading? Click here to get Smoke Signals, our free monthly email that tells you about new articles, recipes, product reviews, science, myth-busting, and more. Be Amazing!

Pickled Eggs Recipe

3.43 from 59 votes

Rate this Recipe

Pickled hard boiled eggs have long been a staple at bars and pubs around the world. Originally created as a means of preserving eggs, these sweet and tangy snacks are a perfect addition to any party menu. In addition to vinegar, sugar, and spices in our recipe, these pickled eggs are stained purple with beet juice for wow factor.

Print Recipe Pin Recipe

Prep Time 10 minutes mins

Cook Time 2 days d

Pickling Time 2 hours hrs

Servings: 6 pickled eggs

Course: Appetizer, Sauces and Condiments, Side Dish, Snack

Cuisine: American

Difficulty: Easy

Ingredients Method Approximate Nutrition Notes

Ingredients

 

US CustomaryMetric

 

1x2x3x?

• 16 ounce can or jar of plain beets
• 1 cup distilled white vinegar
• ¾ cup sugar
• 2 tablespoons Morton Coarse Kosher Salt
• 1 tablespoon pickling spices
• 1 medium onion
• 6 hard cooked eggs

Get Recipe Ingredients

Method

 

Cook ModePrevent your screen from going dark

1. Prep. Pour liquid from the beets into a large bowl or jar that won’t stain, glass is perfect.
2. Add the vinegar, sugar, and salt. Stir until the sugar and salt dissolve almost completely. Thinly slice the onion, separate it into rings then add it to the bowl or jar. Add the beets, eggs, and pickling spices too.
3. Chill. Cover and chill for 2 hours or longer before serving. That's long enough for the beet juice to color the eggs, and penetrate a bit. If you keep them for a day or longer the beet color will penetrate farther until the entire egg turns royal purple.
4. Serve. Enjoy them how you like (they make very colorful deviled eggs). They must be kept in the fridge.

Notes

About the salt. Remember, kosher salt is half the concentration of table salt so if you use table salt, use half as much. Click here to read more about salt and how it works. 

Approximate Nutrition

Calories: 208kcalCarbohydrates: 33gProtein: 7gFat: 6gSaturated Fat: 2gCholesterol: 187mgSodium: 443mgPotassium: 213mgFiber: 2gSugar: 30gVitamin A: 284IUVitamin C: 5mgCalcium: 48mgIron: 2mg

Tried this recipe?

Let us know how it was!