My brother and I recently decided to give egg-pickling a shot after he decided that $30/jar was a bit much to pay. I doubt he's eaten one for more than 15 years, and I certainly haven't, but we both remember them from the good-old-days, and we both like pretty much anything with vinegar in it, so it's worth a shot.
After some time spent looking around on teh intarwebz for pickled egg recipes, we each picked a couple and put them together. That was about two weeks ago. Yesterday, we tested the fruits of our labors. First, the recipes I used:
German Pickled Eggs
- 2 cups apple cider vinegar
- 1 cup sugar
- 1/2 cup water
- 2 tlbs mustard
- 1 tbls. salt
- 1 tbls. celery seed
- 1 tbls. mustard seed
- 6 whole cloves
- 2 onions, thinly sliced
- 12 hard boiled eggs, peeled
Balsamic Pickled Eggs
- 12 hard boiled eggs, shells removed
- 1 medium sweet onion, sliced
- 1 cup balsamic vinegar
- 1/2 cup water
- 1 or 2 tbsp white sugar (depending on your desired sweetness level)
- 4 cloves
- garlic, crushed
My brother made one recipe with white vinegar and pickling spices, and another recipe with malt vinegar, cloves, and cinnamon. I believe that the consensus was that the mustard recipe (and I must stress that these things smell like mustard pickles) and the balsamic recipe were the best.
I must also stress here that none of these recipes tasted like the classic pickled eggs that we remember.