How to Make Pickled Beets in Canada (Bernardin Method)

Pickled beets are the most-Canadian preserve on this site after maybe sauerkraut. Manitoba and Saskatchewan basements have rows of them on the shelves. Newfoundland Sunday dinners have them next to the roast. Quebec, Ontario, and the Maritimes all have versions. They’re easy to make, gorgeous in the jar, and pair with almost every cold-weather Canadian dinner.

This guide covers the Bernardin water-bath method. No invented numbers — for exact processing minutes, check your edition of Bernardin and the altitude adjustments article.

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Pick your beets

The Canadian classics:

• Detroit Dark Red — the standard. Deep red, sweet, medium size, easy to grow. Most Canadian U-picks and farm stands have these.
• Cylindra — cylindrical beets, perfect for slicing into uniform rounds that fit Mason jars perfectly. Originally Danish; widely grown in the Prairies.
• Bull’s Blood — heritage variety with dark red leaves; the leaves are also pickled traditionally.
• Boltardy — resists bolting; reliable for late-summer planting.
• Chioggia (striped) — looks beautiful raw but loses the ring pattern in pickling. Use for fresh salads instead.
• Golden beets — make amber pickles. Don’t mix with reds (the red stains the gold).
• Forono / cylindrical beets generally — slice into very uniform rounds; good for gifting

For pickling specifically, choose small to medium beets, 3-6 cm diameter. Larger beets work but the prep is longer.

What you need

• About 3 kg of beets — yields roughly 6-7 × 500 mL jars
• 5 cups vinegar (white or apple cider, 5% acidity)
• 2 cups water
• 2 cups granulated sugar — or to taste; some recipes go up to 3 cups for sweeter pickles
• 2 tsp pickling salt (non-iodized)
• Pickling spice — 2 cinnamon sticks, 1 tbsp whole cloves, 1 tbsp whole allspice, 1 tbsp mustard seeds (or 2 tbsp pre-mixed Bernardin pickling spice)
• Optional: 4-6 thin slices fresh ginger or a few star anise pods
• Bernardin 500 mL regular-mouth jars, fresh SNAP lids, bands
• Standard canning kit — jar lifter, headspace tool, funnel, water-bath canner, ladle
• Cheesecloth or tea ball — to hold the loose spices

Method

Step 1: Prep the beets

1. Trim — cut the leafy tops to within 2 cm of the crown. Don’t cut into the beet itself or it bleeds.
2. Trim roots — cut off the long tap root if any, but again, don’t cut into the body.
3. Wash under cool water, scrubbing dirt off. Don’t peel.

Step 2: Cook the beets whole

1. Place beets in a large pot, cover with cold water by 5 cm.
2. Bring to a boil, then reduce to a steady simmer.
3. Cook 25-40 minutes for small to medium beets, 45-60 minutes for large. Test for doneness by piercing with a knife — should slide in easily.
4. Drain. Reserve some cooking liquid if you want to use it (some recipes do; the standard doesn’t).

Step 3: Peel

1. As soon as you can handle them, run beets under cool water.
2. Slip the skins off with your fingers — they should peel cleanly. If they don’t, the beets were undercooked; return to boiling water for another 10 minutes.
3. Wear an apron and use a designated pickling cutting board. Beet juice stains everything.
4. Cut the peeled beets:
   • Small whole — leave intact (prettiest in the jar)
   • Medium — quarter or halve
   • Large — slice into 6 mm rounds or 1 cm wedges

Step 4: Make the brine

1. In a large pot, combine:
   • 5 cups vinegar (white or apple cider)
   • 2 cups water
   • 2 cups sugar
   • 2 tsp pickling salt
2. Tie the spices (cinnamon, cloves, allspice, mustard seeds) in a cheesecloth bundle or put them in a large tea ball.
3. Add spice bundle to the brine.
4. Bring to a boil. Simmer 10 minutes to extract the spice flavour.
5. Remove the spice bundle. (Or leave a few cloves and allspice in for visual interest in each jar.)

Step 5: Pack the jars

1. Have your water-bath canner simmering with enough water to cover jars by 2.5 cm.
2. Have hot jars ready, fresh SNAP lids on the counter.
3. Pack hot beets into hot jars. Leave 1.25 cm headspace.
4. Optionally drop 2-3 cloves, 1 allspice berry, and a small cinnamon piece into each jar for visual.
5. Pour hot brine over beets to cover, leaving 1.25 cm (½ inch) headspace (or as your Bernardin recipe specifies).
6. Run the headspace tool down inside each jar to release air bubbles.
7. Wipe rims clean. Apply lids fingertip-tight.

Step 6: Process

1. Lower jars into the canner. Bring water back to a rolling boil.
2. Process for the time in your Bernardin edition (typically 30 minutes for 500 mL jars at sea level for pickled beets — this is a longer-process pickle than dill).
3. Adjust for altitude per our altitude-adjustments guide.
4. Cool 12-24 hours undisturbed on a towel. Check seals.

If a jar doesn’t seal: the 24-hour rule applies.

Storage

• Cool, dark, dry place at room temperature
• Best quality 12 months
• After opening: refrigerate, use within 1-2 months
• Check before eating — pickled beets shouldn’t change much in colour or appearance; significant cloudiness, fuzz, or off smell means discard

Variations

Spiced pickled beets (the heritage Canadian version)

The recipe above. Sweet-sour with warm baking spices.

Dilled beets

Skip the cinnamon, cloves, allspice. Add fresh dill (1 sprig per jar) + 1 garlic clove per jar. Sharper, less sweet. Pairs better with savoury foods than the spiced version.

Pickled beets with onions

Add ½ thinly sliced red onion to each jar before brining. The onions pickle too and become tangy-sweet ribbons. Best heritage Saskatchewan/Manitoba version.

Pickled beets with horseradish

Stir 1 tbsp prepared horseradish (or grated fresh root) into the brine. Ukrainian-Canadian tradition. Pairs with smoked meats and rye bread.

Refrigerator pickled beets (no canning)

Make the brine and pour over cooked-and-peeled beets in any clean jar. Refrigerate 24 hours minimum before eating; keeps 3-4 weeks. Skip water-bath processing entirely. The fastest way to pickle small batches.

How to use pickled beets

• Beside the Sunday roast — turkey, ham, roast beef, pork roast
• Newfoundland boiled dinner — alongside salt beef, cabbage, root vegetables
• In Christmas Ukrainian/Polish dinners — the pickled beet salad with eggs and dill
• Chopped into green salad with goat cheese and walnuts
• On a charcuterie board with cured meats and aged cheese
• As a sandwich topping with grilled cheese (a New Brunswick classic) or smoked meat
• Pureed into beet hummus with chickpeas and tahini
• As a topping for borscht for those who think their borscht needs more beet
• Straight from the jar — the Manitoba basement snacking tradition

Common problems

• Beets bleed too much in the jar. The colour will always migrate into the brine; that’s normal. Excessive bleeding usually means raw-peeled beets (use cook-then-peel).
• Beets are tough. Undercooked. Test with a knife before peeling — should slide in easily. Cook longer next time.
• Brine is cloudy. Likely calcium reaction with sugar; harmless. If accompanied by off smells or fuzzy material, treat as spoilage.
• Beets fade after months. Some pigment loss is normal in storage; happens faster on a sunny shelf. Store in dark.
• Jars didn’t seal. The 24-hour rule.
• Pickled beets are too sweet/sour. Adjust sugar in the brine next batch (within ½ cup either way; don’t drop below 1 cup or you change the preservation balance). Or use white vinegar (sharper) vs apple cider (mellower).
• My hands and counter are bright pink. Welcome to beet pickling. Lemon juice and salt scrub removes most stains; persistent stains fade in a few days.

Why pickled beets are worth making

• They keep for a year. A 6-jar batch is a year’s supply for most households.
• They’re cheap. Fall beets at Canadian farm stands are $1-2 per pound. A 6-jar batch costs under $15 in ingredients.
• They’re a perfect gift. A 500 mL jar of homemade pickled beets gets given to grandmothers and gets remembered.
• They’re the most-Canadian preserve. Heritage Mennonite recipes, Ukrainian Christmas recipes, Newfoundland Sunday dinner tradition, Maritime supper club staple — pickled beets are common across all the regional Canadian food traditions.

Next steps

• Why did my pickles go soft — applies to pickled beets if texture suffered
• Canning altitude adjustments — required reading outside Atlantic Canada
• Best water-bath canner — equipment context
• Bernardin vs Mason vs Kerr jars — which jars to use
• Water-bath canning pillar — the broader method
• Coming next: dilly beans, bread-and-butter pickles, corn relish