Get Picklin’
Get Picklin’: Summer Vegetables that are Perfect to Pickle
BY DAVID OTTERSTROM
Pickled cucumbers have had their moment.
Don’t get me wrong, I love pickled cucumbers — but it's just as fun to pickle other foods, too.
Pickles are essentially vegetables, fruits or other food preserved in a vinegar, water and salt brine mixture. Pickling vegetables gives them a sour and salty kick that can help elevate the dish. You can pickle just about anything, but I don’t recommend using delicate vegetables like lettuce and spinach since they can get too mushy in the brine. Instead, vegetables like sliced-up carrots, turnips and green beans are great for first-time picklers to get their start.
Try pickled onions to pulled pork tacos or pickled beets in a feta walnut salad to boost the flavor of your next dish.
I recently discovered how good pickled radish seed pods are (not to mention easy to make — see below). Radish seed pods are more mild in flavor than the radish root with a more snap pea taste to them, and they taste even better pickled. If you want to give them a shot, let some of your garden radishes flower until they have seed pods. Harvest the young pods while they are still green and tender. Any pods you do not use, let them dry out on the plant and use their seeds to plant more radishes next year.
When making your own pickled preserves, don’t forget to add aromatics to the jar. These are herbs and vegetables that emit a pleasant aroma and can affect and enhance the flavor of the rest of the ingredients. A few to try include peppercorn, thyme, garlic, onion, clove, dill and more.
Here’s my method for quick and convenient pickles of any variety.
Loosely fill a quart mason jar with 3 cups of sliced vegetables and some aromatics of your choice. The aromatics should make up about ½ cup of ingredients. I usually like a few sprigs of dill or thyme, ½ teaspoon of black pepper, a few cloves of garlic and ¼ cup of sliced onion.
Then, fill the rest of the jar with your vinegar mixture. For the mixture, add 1 cup vinegar and 1 cup water in a bowl with 2 teaspoons of salt and 2 tablespoons sugar (feel free to tweak the salt and sugar levels to your liking). Mix until the granules are dissolved, fill up the rest of the mason jar with the liquid and close the jar. Put it in the refrigerator and you’ll have pickled preserves in less than 24 hours.