Red Beet Eggs Salad and Smashed Avocado
Are you ready to elicit more “wow” moments at your dinner table? Serve up this colourful and vibrant red beet eggs salad on a bed of peppery watercress and edible flowers topped with smashed avocado.
Why You’ll Love This Salad
Eggs, avocado smash and watercress. This is a nice and simple pickled egg salad made to look like something out of a magazine. If you like, you can even add some crispy croutons on the top, and you’ll have yourself a deconstructed smashed avocado and egg breakfast.
The vibrant colours of the red beet pickled eggs are simply stunning to look at. To think that they were naturally dyed by earthy red beets and not food colouring is very cool.
The flavour of the eggs is also delicious as the coriander and cumin seeds work their magic.
Smashing avocados add creaminess to the salad while the watercress leaves lighten the overall salad. As we eat with our eyes, the delicate edible flowers do everything to beautify this platter of goodness.
Why Do We Pickle Eggs?
Pickling eggs is an age-old process by which hard-boiled eggs are immersed in brine or a cured vinegar. This was how eggs were preserved for longevity which meant that they could be eaten for weeks and even months later.
Pickled eggs were and perhaps still is in some watering holes across Germany and the United States.
You may find a massive jar of pickled eggs on the counter in some bars, which is still a popular snacking item. Some say it came about to curb drunkenness, while others say the pickling flavour made the patrons thirstier, hence always needing another drink!
What are Pennsylvania Dutch Pickled Eggs?
If you have ever heard of Pennsylvania Dutch pickled eggs and have ever wondered what it was, they are beet pickled eggs originating from Pennsylvania, USA.
Back in the 18th and 19th centuries, German immigrants made their way to Pennsylvania, and they formed a small German-speaking cultural group.
The initial immigrants became known as Deitsch, which essentially stems from the German language Deutsch. Over the years, this morphed into “Dutch”, hence being known as Pennsylvania Dutch.
So if you ever come across Pennsylvania Dutch eggs, you know they are the beet pickled kind. It is a very traditional recipe that gets passed down from generation to generation.
How to Pickle Eggs?
Pickling eggs is an easy process—just one part water to one part vinegar. Add salt and sugar. Peel hard boiled eggs and immerse them into the liquid and let it sit to do its work.
Over time, there are many different ingredients you can add to enhance the flavour of the pickled eggs. For example, you can add spices, herbs, chillies and sauces to the recipe to create different tastes.
If you wish to add colour to the eggs we have here, red beets are the perfect natural dye you can use. The vinegar acts as the bonding agent that allows the red colours to stick to the eggs. The more vinegar you add, the brighter the colour.
How Long Do Pickled Eggs Last?
If stored in an airtight jar or container, well pickled eggs can last in the fridge for approximately 3 months. The pickled eggs must be refrigerated, so they need to stay at 4.5°C or 40°F.
How to Make Spicy Pickled Eggs Recipe?
Making spicy pickled eggs is incredibly easy. The question you should ask yourself is how spicy you want the pickled eggs to be! All you would need to do is add some fresh hot peppers like jalapeno, or if you’re really up for it, slices of Carolina Reapers!
The spiciness from the peppers will infuse the pickling juice and give the eggs the heat it needs.
Recipe Overview
Flavour/Texture: Eggs and avocado. You can’t quite beat this classic combination. These red beet eggs are pickled perfectly in both flavour and colour.
The sharp flavours from the cumin and coriander seeds permeate the earthy beet puree beautifully, while the vinegar provides the classic pickled flavours.
The pickled eggs, however, take on a firmer texture after having gone through the pickling process. The smashed avocado gives it creaminess, while the watercress and edible flowers give it delicate, leafy textures. Eat it all together for the perfect bite.
Ease: Making red beet eggs from scratch is easier than it looks. All you’re doing is essentially allowing the red beet mixture to do the work. No cooking is involved with this salad, and yet you still end up with something that looks so spectacular!
Time: Pickling requires time, so you will have to, at a minimum, prepare the eggs a day before so that it can do its work overnight. Other than that, the rest of the process takes 10 minutes.
Ingredients
These are the ingredients you need for Red Beet Eggs Salad:
Eggs: Any eggs will do for this recipe. I have tried all sorts of different types of eggs, and not one is better than another. To ensure hard boiled eggs don’t crack, always immerse room temperature eggs into a saucepan of water and slowly bring to a boil.
I have always found that adding fridge cold eggs into boiling hot water always cracks both from the extreme change in temperature and the eggs banging against each other.
Beets: Fresh beets are always best, and you will need 2 medium/large sized beets. If you can only find smaller ones, perhaps get 4-6, depending on the size. You need enough to be able to cover 6 eggs in a jar.
Red wine vinegar: An important component to get the colour from the beets to stick to the egg whites. And, of course, you can’t pickle eggs without vinegar!
Traditional Pennsylvania Dutch pickled eggs use apple cider vinegar. Either of the options will work just as well.
Coriander and cumin seeds: Adding some spices makes a difference in the flavours. Just put whole seeds into the mixture when you’re cooking off the beets to allow it to permeate the juices.
Watercress: Fresh watercress is so delicate, and we love the peppery flavour which is perfect to counterbalance the pickling tastes from the red beet eggs. We only want the leaves with a bit of stem for this recipe.
Edible flowers: Edible flowers of any kind add to the overall aesthetic of the salad. They complement the bright fuchsia-coloured eggs perfectly. In fact, they are simple a gorgeous addition to any salad such as our Herb Salad with Edible Flowers.
Variations and Substitutions
Canned beets: If fresh beets are hard to find or are out of your budget, you can use canned beets. Pour in the juices too, and follow the same instructions.
Watercress replacement: If you can’t get watercress, you can replace it with rocket leaves or arugula. Or, if the watercress and rocket leaves are too peppery for you, you can get mixed leaves to tone it down or some baby spinach.
Quail eggs: If you want to be a bit different, you can use quail eggs to replace regular eggs or give the salad different sized elements.
Instructions
Follow these instructions for how to make Red Beet Eggs Salad.
How To Make Red Beet Eggs
Hard boil the eggs. Peel and place in a jar, ready for pickling.
Peel the red beets and cut into chunks. Add into a small saucepan with the red wine vinegar, sugar, coriander seeds and cumin seeds. Bring to a boil and let simmer for a further 20 minutes.
Let it cool down, and then place in a food processor and blitz until pureed.
Pour red beet puree into the jar of peeled eggs. Place in the fridge overnight.
The next day, remove eggs and give them a quick rinse. Pat dry and cut in half.
How To Prepare The Watercress And Avocado
Pick watercress leaves from the stem. Place in a small mixing bowl and add 1 tsp of olive oil, salt and pepper to taste and toss lightly.
Peel avocado and remove the pit.
Smash with a fork and season with salt and pepper to taste.
How to Assemble the Salad
Place the watercress leaves on a serving platter and make room for the avocado.
Add avocado to one side and, using a small fork, make circular motions on the avocado to give it swirls.
Gently place pickled red beet eggs on the other side.
Tuck edible flowers around the salad. Be gentle with them as you don’t want to bruise the flower petals, and you want to keep the flower buds intact.
Pour 1 tsp of olive oil on top of the avocado smash.
Season with pepper and serve.
Great Mains for This Salad
Here are some great mains you can serve with this Red Beets Eggs Salad.
Enjoy this super flavourful one-pot dinner of healthy Tuscan chicken. Easy to make and certainly deserves a good salad to go with it.
For our pescatarian friends, you can try this yummy salmon with lemon dill butter that’s made with only 5 ingredients or perhaps a Southern favourite; shrimp boil.
Frequently Asked Questions
Hard boil quail eggs in a small saucepan. Peel and set aside to cool. In the meantime, bring 1 part vinegar to 1 part water to the boil and add 2 tbsp of salt and 2 tbsp of sugar.
At this point, you can also add different spices into the mixture, such as caraway seeds, paprika, saffron, cumin and/or coriander seeds.
Place the quail eggs and the mixture into a glass jar and place in the fridge overnight.
Red beet juice stains with vigour. To help prevent stains when preparing them, don a pair of disposable gloves to prevent stains on your fingers, wear an old apron to stop stains on your clothes and place an old kitchen towel under the chopping board on your kitchen bench.
Should you still get stains or splashes of red beet juice anywhere, wash it off immediately. Don’t attend to it later, as the longer you leave it, the harder it is for the stains to be removed.
Should you get red beet stains on your clothes, the trick is to attend to them immediately. Don’t let it fester and allow the dye to become more steadfast.
Remove the beets from the clothes with a utensil of some kind. Ideally, flick it off or pick it up rather than wiping it off, as you’ll just create more stains.
Wipe the clothing with a wet white paper towel to try and absorb as much of the stain as possible. Then run the underside of the clothing under cold water to push the stain off the fabric.
Then apply your stain remover as you normally would and give it a good wash.
To delay the browning process of the smashed avocado, you can add some lime juice and then cover with some plastic wrap until you’re ready to eat.
This sure is no ordinary egg salad. The gorgeous hues of bright pink from the red beet eggs combined with the colours of edible flower blossoms sure makes for a pretty recipe.
Enjoy all the compliments that will be coming your way! Great salads for fish or salads for pork mains.
Oh! As the red beet eggs shelf life is up to 3 months, perhaps you might like to make extra? You can even use them to make devilled red beet eggs! How amazing would that look?
That’s all!
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Red Beet Eggs Salad and Smashed Avocado
Ingredients
Salad
- 6 eggs
- 2 beets
- 1½ cup red wine vinegar
- ½ cup sugar
- 1 tsp coriander seeds
- 1 tsp cumin seeds
- 1 bunch watercress
- 2 tsp olive oil, divided
- 1 avocado
- 1 pkt edible flowers
- salt, to taste
- pepper, to taste
Click on the toggle below for conversion to US Cooking Units.
Instructions
Salad
- Hard boil the eggs. Peel and place in a jar, ready for pickling.
- Peel the red beets and cut into chunks. Add into a small saucepan with the red wine vinegar, sugar, coriander seeds and cumin seeds. Bring to a boil and let simmer for a further 20 minutes. Let it cool down, and then place in a food processor and blitz until pureed.
- Pour red beet puree into the jar of peeled eggs. Place in the fridge overnight.
- The next day, remove eggs and give them a quick rinse. Pat dry and cut in half.
- Pick watercress leaves from the stem. Place in a small mixing bowl and add 1 tsp of olive oil, salt and pepper to taste and toss lightly.
- Peel avocado and remove the pit. Smash with a fork and season with salt and pepper to taste.
Assembly
- Place the watercress leaves on a serving platter and make room for the avocado.
- Place avocado to one side and, using a small fork, make circular motions on the avocado to give it swirls
- Place pickled red beet eggs on the other side.
- Tuck edible flowers around the salad.
- Pour 1 tsp of olive oil on top of the avocado smash.
- Season with pepper and serve.
Notes
- If fresh beets are hard to find or are out of your budget, you can use canned beets. Pour in the juices too, and follow the same instructions.
- If you can’t get watercress, you can replace it with rocket leaves or arugula. Or, if the watercress and rocket leaves are too peppery for you, you can get mixed leaves to tone it down or some baby spinach.
- If you want to be a bit different, you can use quail eggs in replacement for regular eggs or in addition so as to give the salad different sizes.
- To delay the smashed avocado’s browning process, you can add some lime juice and then cover with some plastic wrap until you’re ready to eat.
Nutrition
*Disclaimer: Nutritional information provided is an estimate only and generated by an online calculator.
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Red Beet Eggs Salad and Smashed Avocado – My vote is a resounding yes! Such a unique and tasty combination. Definitely worth trying!
Absolutely divine. It’s such a vibrant salad and so delicious. Will be making again!
Excellent! Glad you liked it!
This salad was great! My son was amazed by the colorful eggs and couldn’t get enough of them. We all loved the salad itself, as well. Thanks so much!
Hahah! It does have an amazing colour. Something a little different for the dinner table.
This salad is as delicious as it is beautiful. I served it for a dinner party with plenty of crusty bread. It was a hit!
The bread would have been good with the eggs and smashed avocado
This salad has some of my favorite ingredients! Like avocados, eggs, and beets. So I decided to give it a try. It turned out so pretty and delicious!
Happy to hear!
My mom’s side of the family is Pa. Dutch, and this is different than the Red Beet Eggs I grew up on, and different than the recipe I have from an heirloom Mennonite cookbook. First, there never is any blitzing or pureeing of the beets in any recipe I have seen before. Not to say that you can’t do it, but, why? Whole pickled beets are awesome. They are kept whole and pickled with the eggs. While there are many variations of the spices, whole cinnamon sticks and whole cloves are a part of my family recipe. I wait about 4-5 days until the whole white is purple. I often can’t resist the most basic way of eating them, which is to hold the pickled egg in my hand and chomping on it after sprinkling some salt on top.
Oh gosh I wish I could get my hands on an heirloom Mennonite cookbook! That would such a treasure to have. You’re absolutely right, you don’t have to puree the beets and pickled beets are fantastic. It’s just a preference I have and I did the same for our beet cured salmon too.
The premise of this recipe was a play on “breakfast”. Eggs with smashed avocado but thought to just make it a little more fun. I did exactly that with the extra eggs I made… ate them whole with a sprinkling of salt:)
I haven’t tried pickling eggs before, thanks for all the details in this recipe. Excited to try this recipe.