Tickled about pickles!
Photo by Kyle Green l The Roanoke Times
I had a GREAT time working on today’s Front Burner column, which is about refrigerator pickles. Seeing as how we are in the South, I’ll bet a lot of you are quite familiar with refrigerator pickles. But have you noticed, if you’ve been eating out a bit in the past couple of years, how popular pickled vegetables have become in restaurants?
The other night, a friend and I had a beautiful cheese plate at Local Roots Restaurant that included pickled carrot, rhubarb and onions. Along with sweet daubs of honey and peach, and salty nuts, the pickles were extraordinary. Talk about delicious layers of flavor!
And that’s what today’s column is about: How to make your own refrigerator pickles and how to pair them with foods at home. If you’ve ever made pickles, you probably know recipes can be adapted to suit your tastes so long as you don’t mess with the amount of vinegar in them (that helps preserve them and keep them safe to eat). But you can add more or less sugar and any kind of spices you like.
In the photo above, you’ll see three kinds of pickles I made last week: Sweet peppers and onions with garlic and hot pepper, which I seasoned with bay leaf and mustard seed; red onions with star anise, cinnamon and bay; and carrots and cauliflower with serrano chiles, bay leaf and mustard seed. I can’t wait to put those onions on a burger or serve them with some roasted pork. And I want to chop the pickled veggies finely and add them to some pasta or potato salad. Or just eat them out of the jar!
I’m sure there are a lot of people reading this who know a heckuva lot more about pickles than I do, so please share your knowledge. What veggies or fruits do you like to pickle and what do you serve them with?
To see the recipes I used, click the links below:
Pickled red onions
Spicy pickled vegetables
April 25, 2012 - 6:02 AM
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I am making pickled corn right now, it’s been sitting for a week so far but should need about two.
My eldest aunt has been making it for years, but it usually turns out brown and mushy. Her youngest sister has perfected it though. so I am doing it under her guidance.
The corn is cut off the cob and mixed with 2/3 vinegar and 1/3 water and salted to your liking. It is kept in a unrefrigerated crock covered with cloth and stirred every day for about two weeks. Or until it starts to get a slightly fermented flavor.
It does get canned, but I would be given instruction on that until the time comes. So I don’t know if it is a self-sealing concoction or if it has to be heated.
But the stuff is awesome. I love adding it to creamy soups or chowders, tortillas/tacos, salads and even pizza. It is great on just about anything and adds a twang to it.
Pickled (dill) green beans are good, especially with Bloody Marys, as is pickled okra.
Just today I brought a salad for lunch and will add last summer’s homemade dilly beans and pickled hot banana peppers. I suppose dilly beans aren’t so adventurous with all of the pickling combinations out there, but they are delicious. Mine are made spicy with cayenne. They are also particularly good on hotdogs!
My mom has been making dilly beans for years and we all love them. She cans hers, but has anybody ever made refrigerator green bean pickles? I wonder how they’d be. Great idea to use those as a Bloody Mary garnish.
I’ve never had pickled corn, Maria, but it sounds interesting. It seems more like a fermentation than a pickling the way you are doing it unrefrigerated.
I’d LOVE to have a recipe for pickled garlic cloves. Does anyone have a recipe? Maybe a recipe with low salt? Anyone know where you can buy pickled garlic?
Toshka, I didn’t use any salt at all in the pickles I made for this article. I did use garlic in several of them.
I believe I have a pickled garlic recipe at home. I’ll post it for you so keep an eye on this thread.
I think you might want to can it, though… you probably wouldn’t go through a whole jar of the stuff in a month, would you?
Try me! Everytime I go by the antipasto bar in Kroger’s, I get a sample of the pickled garlic! I once bought pickled asparagus and pickled garlic at a fall craft show at the Roanoke Civic Center, and the maker was based in VA, but I can’t recall the name or location. Any help would be appreciated, and yes, I’d love to have your recipe.
I will get it to you.
You could also try the basic refrigerator method and just make one jar. That’s what’s nice about that method, you can make as little or as much as you want.
We pickled beans, okra, and beets last summer. We like stuff spicy, so most of them had chiles floating around in the jar.
The beets were the best. And as someone noted, pickled okra is great on a pick in a bloody.
Did you end up incorporating the pickles into any interesting recipes, Kristen, or did you mainly just eat them on salads and for snacks?
I make pickled green beans!!! absolutely amazing… green bean that tastes like a dill pickle. absolutely amazing!!!