August Recipe: Rebecca’s Quick Pickles
Recipe contributed by Rebecca Baughman-Kerns, Planted Society’s Program Manager💚
I have joked in the past that my favorite meal is August, the time when I am pulling in a ridiculous number of vegetables from my midwest garden.
This week I am inundated with huge cucumbers, tons of okra and a dizzying number of zucchini. I love them all, but my family is looking a little worn out from all of the sautéed vegetables and succotash they have been served recently between my garden and the farmer's market.
While I generally pickle things for later in the year, quick pickles have been a fun way to get my son in on the job -- no boiling water, no long wait. I use one basic brine for all kinds of firm vegetables—cucumbers, onions, carrots, radishes, zucchini or whatever happens to be coming out of the garden.
Unlike traditional canning, quick pickles aren’t shelf-stable; they live in the refrigerator and are ready to eat after a short rest in the brine. They’re crunchy, bright, tangy, and an easy way to add vegetables to sandwiches, grain bowls, tacos, salads, or eat over the kitchen sink when nobody else is watching.
Prep Time: ten minutes for the brine and however long it takes you to prepare your veggies.
Resting Time: 24 hours in the refrigerator is plenty of time to soak up the flavors.
Quick Pickles last two to three weeks in the refrigerator.
Ingredients
2 Cups Vinegar (white or apple cider)
1 Cup Water
2 T Kosher or Pickling Salt
2-4T Sugar, depending on how sweet you want your pickles
Flavoring agents -- smashed garlic cloves, peppercorns, dill (fresh or dried), cumin, turmeric, star anise, cloves, etc.
Whatever hard flesh vegetables you want to pickle
Instructions
Bring first four ingredients to a boil in a heavy-bottomed saucepan. Maintain temperature for two minutes to ensure everything is melted and incorporated..
Prepare your pickling ingredients. Cucumbers can be cut into spears, sliced, cut into spirals. Radishes can be quartered or sliced. Cauliflower is amazing broken into florets. Carrots can be cut into carrot sticks. Zucchini makes amazing sandwich pickles when sliced, or snackers when quartered.
Place your flavoring agents in the bottom of a very clean jar, stuff your vegetables in above them and cover in the brine. Seal with a clean lid and place in the refrigerator for 24 hours. Enjoy!
Once you have made your first jar of quick pickles, everything that comes through your kitchen will look like a pickling possibility. After veggies, you can move over to fruit which is amazing on a charcuterie board. Try firm green grapes, slightly too firm plums or peaches. Strawberries, green or red, can be fantastic. Apple slices are fantastic with cinnamon sticks and ginger as your flavoring agents.
