It’s summer, y’all. From Expat Knives World Headquarters comes the world famous annual pickling of...er, pickles. If you want to replicate this in your kitchen, here are the steps: 1. Ask the wife to leave the kitchen. She may be unaccustomed to this but it is nice to give her a break every once in a while. She can go do laundry or something while she rests. 2. Cut up a couple of pounds of cucumbers. And peppers. And onions. And some garlic. This is best done with an Expat cleaver. I don’t think any other knife will work. (In the pictures below, I doubled the recipe so it’s 4 lbs of cucumbers). 3. Put all the ingredients (except the garlic) into a bowl and salt the heck out of it. Like tons of salt. You can use pickling salt or kosher salt. Just drench it in salt. 4. Cover with plastic wrap or aluminum foil or whatever. And refrigerate for a couple of hours. To be continued in a couple of hours.... In the meantime, here are a few pictures of the aforementioned steps.
5. After a couple of hours, remove the veggies and rinse them thoroughly. Like really thoroughly. You are trying to get all the salt off of the outside. The cucumbers themselves have absorbed salt. You just don’t want the caked on salt. This should take you a few minutes of rinsing. Set aside. 6. In a pot, put in about 3/4 of a cup of sugar for every pound of cucumbers you are cooking. Add peppercorns, mustard seeds, cloves, ground ginger, red pepper flakes, and red eyed hog. You can play around with the spices you want. Some people put tumeric in it. 7. Put enough white vinegar in the pot to cover how much veggies you’ll be putting in the pot later. Add cloves of garlic and bring to a boil. 8. Cook two minutes at a boil and add all the veggies. Bring it ALMOST back to a boil and then remove from heat. 9. Put into jars and put them in the fridge. Boom. Pickles for the rest of the summer.
My wife (when not doing laundry) does this a few times a year. They are delicious and well worth the time, ours turn out slightly sweet.
I pour them into the jars and make sure the liquid is to the top before I put the lid on. I don’t put it in a hot water bath but I would imagine they would last a long time outside of the fridge. I’ve kept them for months inside the fridge. It’s vinegar based anyway so they’ll be eaten before they go bad.
you can add dill weed or garlic or shredded ghost peppers , each provides it own unique flavour. I like em with all three! Momused to make these a lot in the Kootenays when I was a kid (she had a huge veggie garden, and canned lots)
Once you put the hot liquid in, put th caps on and the rings and just turn to the first twinge of snug. Wait for it to cool then crank the rings tight. I 've kept them in a lower cabinet ( close to the floor and dark) for 3 years and still had "crunch" in the pickles...and didn't die from eating them. . Ymmv.
This is exactly what I do. I don’t go as far as canning them in a hot water bath. Simply because we eat them too quickly but by filling the liquid all the way too the top when it’s boiling hot, and screwing the lid down, it’s fine for months easily. Probably longer. It’s mostly vinegar anyway so it’s naturally preserved.
Here's the recipe my wife uses. 1 cup distilled white vinegar 1 tablespooon salt 2 cups white sugar 6 cups sliced cucumbers 1 cup sliced onoins 1 cup sliced green bell peppers step 1. In a medium saucepan over medium heat, bring vinegar, salt and sugar to a boil. Boil until the sugar has dissolved. About 10 minutes. step 2. Place the sliced items in a large bowl and pour the vinegar mixture over everything. step 3. Transfer mixture to sterile containers, cover and place in the frig. Let cool and enjoy.
That’s pretty much mine too. I just soak them in salt for a couple of hours. Its what draws out the liquid and makes them really crunchy when you bite into them. When we have the Expat gathering, we’ll have various food contests. We can add pickles to the bill. I’d like to do best chili also-has to be cooked over a wood fire though. It will be a nice end of the day after the scout rifle competition.
My wife said she already uses less sugar and that you should still be able to make pickles without any.