BACKYARD BLISS | Pickling pink your home-grown eggs

Feeling overwhelmed with excess chook, duck or quail eggs?

Looking for something to do with them besides omelets and quiches?

Check this out. Pink Pickled. Eggs.

To make your own pink eggs all you have to do is hard boil however many excess eggs you have.

I find a good fail-proof way of doing this is to pop the eggs in a saucepan of cold water, bring them to the boil and then keep them at the boil for seven minutes.

Then, quickly drain the hot water and refill the pot with cold water.

This 'shocks' the eggs and helps them retract from the edge of shell making them easier to peel.

Ironically, it's also best if you don't use your freshest eggs, but ones which are at least a few days old - I'm not sure why, but they're always easier to peel.

In a separate saucepan, boil some beetroot chopped or sliced and cook until the beetroot is soft.

You can actually integrate the sliced beetroot into the final egg jar and double up so you get pickled beetroot as well if you like.

Remove the beetroot (you can add it in again later or use it in a different dish) and add sliced onions, spices of your choice, vinegar and sugar.

Simmer the whole lot until the onions are clear and the smell is amazing.

This is where things get a bit loose, as you can literally choose your own adventure for your taste buds.

I'm not overly amazing with following measurements and generally just make it up which usually works.

The thing I love about this pickling technique is that if you like curry flavoured eggs, then you just add curry powder, if you want a cinnamon effect, add more cinnamon - you get the idea.

You can take it any which way.

Once your pink mixture is done, pop your boiled eggs in a glass jar and pour the pink goodness over the top until it just covers the eggs.

I advocate using a glass jar.

I use fowlers as I happen to have lots, however you can use a standard glass jar with a screw top lid as well.

Once packed in and sealed, the eggs need to be stored properly.

As I use a low percentage of vinegar/sugar I put them in the fridge to prevent them from going off.

If you'd prefer not to do this you need to use a higher percentage of vinegar and/or sugar to preserve them safely.

Forget about them for three to four days to give them time to soak up the flavour and colour, and then open up the jar and feast away.

They'll keep in your fridge for weeks and the pink colour will deepen over time, as will the flavour.

We eat them solo as they are, or in salads - but really you can add them to pretty much any dish as a side bit of 'bling' to brighten your day/night and your taste buds.

Huzzah for pink eggs!

This is one of the ultimate examples of how food can be healthy, tasty and fun.