If you’ve ever wondered how to preserve your garden beets without turning them into pickles, you’re in the right place. In this guide, I’ll walk you through how to pressure can plain beets, step by step. This method keeps your beets versatile, so you can season and use them later in grain bowls, muffins, smoothies, and salads.
Canning might sound intimidating if you’ve never done it before, but beets are actually one of the easier vegetables to start with. As long as you follow safe, tested guidelines, you’ll have jars of shelf-stable, nutrient-rich beets ready to go whenever you need them.
Why pressure can beets instead of pickling?
For me, versatility wins when I’m preserving my garden. For this reason, you’ll often find very “basic” foods in my kitchen. Most beet canning recipes you’ll find are for pickled beets. While delicious, sometimes you just want plain beets without added flavors.
Pressure canning plain beets lets you preserve them in their natural state so you can season them however you’d like later. Because beets are a low-acid vegetable, they cannot be safely water-bath canned unless you pickle them.
Pressure canners heat food to a high enough temperature to destroy Clostridium botulinum spores, which boiling water alone cannot do. Pressure canning is the only safe method for plain, non-pickled beets.
👉 Pro Tip: If this is your first time pressure canning, I highly recommend reviewing the USDA’s Using Pressure Canners and Principles of Home Canning before starting. These resources will help you understand why the process looks the way it does.
Choosing the best beets for canning
- Size matters: Beets 1–2 inches in diameter are perfect for whole packs. Larger than 3 inches can be fibrous and don’t can as well.
- Freshness counts: The fresher the beet, the better it will taste after canning. Older beets tend to lose sweetness and may toughen.
- Variety tips: Red, golden, and Chioggia (candy-striped) beets all work well. Keep in mind that golden beets stain less and have a milder flavor, while red beets are earthier and more pigmented.
👉 Pro Tip: Keep stems and taproots on during the pre-cook step—this helps reduce bleeding of that vibrant beet color into the water and keeps nutrients inside the beet.
Pressure Canning Checklist
I didn’t grow up canning, but I love to garden and preserve my harvest. During my time learning, I created this useful checklist for pressure canning that I use every time I can.
Download it now, put it in a plastic sleeve, use a dry erase marker and gain the confidence you need to successfully can anything!
Step-by-Step Guide: how to pressure can plain beets
1. Select and Prepare Beets
- Choose small to medium beets (around golf ball size are best) that are firm, smooth, and free of blemishes. Large beets can be used and cut down to the size the recipe suggests.
- Wash them well, but leave about 2 inches of stem and the tap root intact. This helps preserve their vibrant color and nutrients while pre-cooking.
2. Pre-Cook the Beets
- Place beets in a large pot of boiling water.
- Cook until skins slip off easily, usually 15–25 minutes depending on size and quantity of beets. I use a BIG pot that requires 25 minutes or a few more.
- Drain, cool just enough to handle, then peel. The skins should slide off with a gentle rub, I find using a paper towel is helpful and keeps it a tad bit more clean – no knives required.
3. Pack the Jars
- Trim off stems and roots after pre-cooking.
- Cut beets into slices, cubes, or leave whole if they’re small – be consistent on size and always follow directions. The size of the cut beet pieces affects the processing time; therefore, if you use whole beets and the recipe calls for diced beets, you may be under-processing the product.
- Pack into hot jars, my favorite method is to wash jars in the dishwasher just before processing to pull out as needed, leaving 1-inch headspace.
- Cover with boiling water, again leaving 1 inch of headspace.
4. Add Salt (Optional)
Add ½ teaspoon salt per pint or 1 teaspoon per quart. This is for flavor only—skip it if you’d prefer salt-free canning.
5. Remove Air Bubbles and Seal
Slide a clean utensil down the inside of the jar to release trapped air bubbles. Wipe rims with a clean cloth, then apply lids and screw bands until fingertip tight.
6. Process in a Pressure Canner
- Process pints for 30 minutes and quarts for 35 minutes at 10 pounds pressure (adjust for altitude as needed).
- Always consult your canner’s manual for exact processing times and PSI requirements.
7. Reducing pressure, cooling and downtime
- Be sure to allow your pressure canner to return to 0 PSI. While you have this down time, get another round going. Or, if you want to vary how you preserve your beets, try my favorite RD Fermented Beets + Beetgreens!
FAQs about canning beets
Nutrition spotlight: why beets deserve pantry space
Beets aren’t just pretty on the plate—they pack in some powerful compounds:
- Betalains: These natural plant pigments (betacyanins for red/purple beets, betaxanthins for golden ones) are the primary nitrogen containing pigment which possess high antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, and anti-fatigue activities.
- Why keep stems and roots when boiling? Leaving them on while pre-cooking keeps betalains and nutrients from leaching into the water. Your beets stay more vibrant and nutrient-dense.
- Gut-friendly fiber: The betalains and polyphenols have been shown in studies to increase various gut microbial organisms like muciniphila which is associated with lowering inflammation and diabetes.
- Pink Urine?!: Don’t be alarmed if your urine (or stool) turns pink after eating beets—this is beeturia. It’s harmless, though in some cases it can signal lower stomach acid or changes in iron status.
Common mistakes when canning beets
- Using water-bath canning for plain beets (not safe).
- Cutting off stems/roots before boiling → leads to nutrient and color loss.
- Overcooking beets before canning → mushy texture.
- Forgetting to adjust for altitude.
- Overfilling jars → prevents proper heat circulation.
- Not pre-heating jars → can cause cracking when hot beets go in.
- Using beet cooking water → can make liquid cloudy and potentially introduce bacteria.
Estimating yield of plain canned beets
The Farmer’s Almanac uses this equation:
1 pound (5 medium) = 2–1/2 cups chopped
I had about 7 pounds of beets, and used about 1 ½ cups, chopped per pint. That resulted in 12 pints of pressure canned beets. *Note that I had quite a bit more harvested which I put in the fridge for later, fermented and froze. Mixing up methods help utilize downtime during processing and gets the job done!
How to use home-canned beets
One of the best parts of canning plain beets is their versatility. A few of my favorite ways:
- Toss into a beet and goat cheese salad with toasted walnuts.
- Blend into a vibrant, creamy beet soup.
- Add to a grain bowl with greens, nuts, seeds, olive oil and vinegar.
- Add to smoothies or muffins for an earthy, antioxidant-rich boost.
- Blend into hummus for a colorful dip.
Final thoughts
Learning how to pressure can beets is one of the most rewarding ways to preserve your harvest. With a little preparation, you’ll have jars of nutrient-rich, versatile beets ready for quick meals all year long.
If you give this method a try, let me know how you like to use your canned beets! Or, if you want to eat your beets fresh, check out my easy, foil free way to roast whole beets.
Pressure Canned Plain Beets
Equipment
- Pressure Canner I have an All-American
- Canning jars, lids, and bands
- Funnel,
- Ladle
- “Debubbler” or food-safe plastic knife
- Headspace measuring tool (or clean food-safe ruler)
- Clean cloth
- Jar lifter (I recommend the spring-loaded kind!
- Sharpie for labeling
- Measuring Scoops & Spoons if adding salt
Ingredients
- 1 1/2 cups Fresh beets, chopped into 1/2 inch cubes, or left whole if smaller
- 1/2 tsp salt, optional for flavor, not safe
Instructions
- 1. Trim off beet tops, leaving an inch of stem and roots to reduce bleeding of color.2. Scrub well. Cover with boiling water. Boil until skins slip off easily; about 15 to 25 minutes depending on size. 3. Cool just enough to handle without burning yourself, then remove skins, and trim off stems and roots. 4. The beets should remain warm or hot going into the jars. Leave baby beets whole. Cut medium or large beets into 1/2-inch cubes or slices. Halve or quarter very large slices. 5. Add 1/2 teaspoon of salt per pint to the jar, if desired. (1 tsp for quart jars) 6. Fill jars with hot beets, salt and top with fresh hot water that has been brought to a boil first (not the water you used to boil the beets with), leaving 1-inch headspace.7. Wipe the rim of the jar with a clean towel. 8. Top with a clean, room temperature canning lid (these have been washed in hot soapy water first, no need to boil). And place a "finger tightened ring" to secure. 9. Place in the pressure canner, fill the pressure canner with remaining jars. 10. Place the lid of the canner on, making sure the top is level and tighten the wing nuts to reduce steam loss. 11. Vent steam for 10 minutes with the stove at medium – high. 12. Place your weighted gauge on the canner and bring up to 10 PSI. Once that is reached begin your timer for 30 minutes for pint jars (35 minutes for quarts). 13. Once finished, turn off the stove heat. Allow to cool down to 0. Once the pressure is back at 0 remove the weighted gauge and remove your lid. This usually takes 10 minutes or so. 14. Remove your pressure canning lid and pull out jars with a jar lifter placing them on a towel with several inches of space between each jar. Allow to sit for 24 hours.