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Though I have been a lover of pickles my whole life, I have never pickled. This was a fact that I had meant for some time to remedy, and finally the day has come.
It’s really super easy. And the only real limitations are your imagination – you can pickle damn near anything. Okay, some results might be better than others, but the fact remains. Vegetables, meats, whatever.
I picked some veggies that I had just recently grabbed from the market the past weekend. I looked around all my favorite little corners of the internet for a good recipe for pickling – most involve some water, some salt, a lot of vinegar (white, or white wine, or cider, lots of different options), some herbs, and some garlic. I settled on using the recipe recently posted by the White on Rice Couple for pickled green tomatoes because… well, mostly because their pictures of those tomatoes were so awesome. But a pickling recipe in general is something I think you can really play with a lot, and while this was only my first attempt I do expect that eventually I will have several different pickling recipes in my arsenal that I have honed down to perfection after awhile.
Note – I didn’t cook the carrots or daikon before pickling this time around, because I’m intending them really to be just a good snack. If you want to use them in a dish, you may want to cook the harder vegetables in boiling water for a few minutes before putting them into your mason jars.
So like I said, easy peasy. I made two mason jars worth of pickled vegetables, and the amounts below were sufficient without doubling.
Ingredients…
- 3 large carrots
- 2 large daikon
- 2 pickling size cucumbers
- 2 quarts (8 cups) of water
- 1 cup white vinegar
- 1/2 cup sea salt or kosher salt or canning salt or pickling salt
- 2 cloves minced garlic (1 clove per jar)
- (optional) red pepper flakes for some heat
Put the water, vinegar, and salt all into a large sauce pan over a medium-high heat and bring up to a boil, then reduce to simmer. Simmer for awhile until all the salt is completely dissolved. This is a good time to chop up all your vegetables.
Meanwhile, boil your mason jars in a pot of water to make sure they are good and clean. This will sterilize them. Dishwashers will do a pretty good job too as long as you have the heat on the highest setting (note: if you are sterilizing for the purpose of canning, you definitely want to boil them).
Add your chopped up vegetables to the mason jars.
Admire them. Gently caress them. Whisper sweet nothings to them, really get them in a the mood for a good, hard… pickling.
I was just about ready to finish up the job and pour the pickling liquid into the jars when I spotted a bunch of lonely cherry tomatoes desperately trying to catch my eye. I could almost hear them crying out, just begging to be pickled. And as any good, chivalrous gentleman would, I succumbed to their seductions and gave them the pickling they deserved.
When your vegetables are in the jars and all ready and primed for pickling, douse them with your pickle juice, really get it all over them until the jar is filled up and the vegetables are entirely submerged in the warm, salty liquid. And then just when they think they’ve had enough and can’t take anymore, that’s when you hit them with the garlic and spices. And then, they can rest. For awhile, to cool to room temperature.
Now, you’re almost done. All that’s left is to set the jars in the fridge for two full days worth of marathon non-stop, nasty, toe-curling pickling, at the end of which they will be utterly exhausted, thoroughly elated, and completely delicious.
And I assure you, if you’ve done everything just right, this is a treat you will definitely want to call on the next day. And the next. And the next. A good relationship can be maintained for several months, but after that, it’s best to find yourself some new vegetables to pickle – as time passes things will undoubtedly start to turn a little sour.
I think I need a cold shower.
