Hi friends!
Today's post is going to be about pickled eggs, why? Because I have been making a lot of those for the last... um half a year probably! The funny thing is that I just recently discovered them about 2 years ago, when me and my husband @matt-a went to Eastern Kentucky. On a warm spring day while I was just sitting in the car at a gas station he brought me a hardboiled pickled egg and reached it to me, I was very confused as I had never seen or heard about one before at the time, needless to say that I did not eat it, it smelt just like vinegar and had a weird texture, which later I learned was actually normal. That was also the time when I shot a gun for the first time in my life, which was very scary and I had to turn away from it, later I learned that it was not a right thing to do, I am much better at it now though!
Yes, those are the tails of raccoons and foxes that I personally killed myself.
I'm joking, I love animals!
Anyways, the other day I felt like researching pickled eggs, I just kept thinking about how I did not know they existed for almost 30 years of my life, and here's what I found out on Food Timeline in case you guys are also interested in their origin, well the first printed mentions:
Pickled eggs
The art of pickling, as a preservation techique, is thousands of years old. Recipes evolved according to place and taste. While eggs have been preserved for future use using various pickling-type methods, the earlist print reference we're finding for "picked eggs" in English/USA cookbooks is from the early 19th century.
"Vinegar pickling of all kinds of food suddenly became very popular in the sixteenth century in England, when salted foods were losing favor and were gradually being relegated to the food of the poor. When the English farmer's wife had a glut of eggs, she would boil then hard, shell them, and pile them into earthenware or glass jars and over them scalding vinegar well seasoned with pepper, ginger, garlic, and allspice. "The eggs are fit to use after a month" and were quite a treat in the farmhouse kitchen."
---Pickled, Potted, and Canned: How the Art and Science of Food Preserving Changed the World, Sue Shephard [Simon & Schuster:New York] 2000 (p. 96)
[1839]
"Pickled eggs.
Boil them till they are hard; throw them into cold water immediately while hot, which will make the shells slip off smoothly without breaking the eggs. Boil some red beets till very soft; peel and mash them fine, and put enough of the juice into some plain cold vinegar to color it fine pink; add a very little salt, pepper, nutmeg and cloves; put the eggs into a jar, and transfuse the vinegar, &c. over them. They make a delightful garnish to remain whole, for poultry, game and fish, and still more beautiful when cut in ringlets."
---The Kentucky Housewife, Lettice Bryan [Shepard & Stearns:Cincinnati] 1839, reprinted by Image Graphics, Paducah KY( p. 187)
Well, time went by and I learned how to make these eggs myself, and they are actually not that bad if you don't let them sit in the marinade for too long haha. And now I'd like to share a recipe that I used for my last batch of pickled eggs, they turned out good, so maybe try it out as well!
Ingredients for a quart size mason jar:
- 6 hard boiled eggs,
- a star anise,
- 1-2 cardamom pods,
- some fresh jalapeno pepper,
- a few slices of fresh beet,
- a garlic clove,
- 4-6 cloves,
- coriander and dill seeds,
- red dried chili pepper,
- a couple bay leaves,
- a few allspice pods,
- teaspoon sugar,
- teaspoon salt,
- 5-7 oz vinegar (regular).
Method:
Place everything, but the eggs in your jar and pour a little boiling water over the spice mix, I do that just to melt the sugar and salt and make the spices smell haha. Next, peel the eggs, place them in the jar, pour the vinegar over the eggs, covering them completely. Secure close the jar's lid. Refrigerate up to a month.
The pickled eggs will be ready to eat after a few days. The longer they sit in the pickling juice, the more vinegary they become.
Cats don't like pickled eggs.
