Can you believe that just 1 year ago I announced the release of my cookbook, The Complete Guide to Pickling? More than 6,000 copies have sold over the last year, and I’ve received such amazing feedback from readers. I’m particularly thrilled that I can continue to share some of my favorite recipes from the 125-strong collection. Thanks to Clean Plates, you can now learn more about—and how to make—my Cultured Curtido (Cabbage Slaw) recipe.
Learn to make fermented and quick curtido
Tag: how to pickle
Preserving Onions
Until I wrote the The Complete Guide to Pickling, I rarely pickled onions on their own. I dropped slices into other pickle jars, from refrigerator zucchini to canned bread-and-butter cucumbers to fermented kimchi. They weren’t just garnish and always ended up on sandwiches or in breakfast potatoes. But I rarely devoted pantry or fridge space to jars of pickled onions.
Once I started creating just such onion-focused recipes for the cookbook, I couldn’t stop. There were so many fun variations, flavors, and uses. Now I’m simply making the book’s recipes for my own enjoyment, and if you open my fridge today—you’ll find plenty of onion pickles.
Read more about preserving onions and learn to make Apple-Sweetened Yellow Onions
Preserving Chilies
Just like the cabbage I wrote about last week, chilies feature heavily in my pickling cookbook, The Complete Guide to Pickling. I pickle and preserve them on their own in recipes ranging from Beer-Pickled Jalapenos to Spicy Vinegar and from quick-pickled Chile Rings to fermented hot sauces. I also drop them into many of the savory pickles in the book and even a few of the sweeter ones, like Jerk-Spiced Banana Pickles.
Do I preserve so many chilies because we grow more than 40 pepper plants every year, or do we grow that many plants so I have boxes of chilies? It’s hard to say, but at least half of our homegrown peppers carry a mild to a fiery heat. Jalapenos and poblanos take up much of the hoop house space, but I bump up the Scoville scale with serranos, bird’s eye chilies, habaneros, and cayenne peppers.
The mix varies each year—as does the quality and size of the harvest. After buying and pickling pepperoncini to test for a new recipe for the cookbook, I grew some of these mild chilies for the first time last year. They started turning red when they were smaller than my thumb, so I pickled them in pint jars. This year, a plant from Swan River Gardens has grown taller than the cherry tomato cages and produced peppers longer than my index finger. Two half-gallon jars are stuffed full in my fridge, and more peppers are ready to harvest.
Read more about preserving chilies and learn to make Sambal Oelek (Chile Paste)
Preserving Cabbage
When Americans think of pickled foods, they often start with two vegetables: cucumbers and cabbage. For both types, the options extend far beyond basic dill slices and sauerkraut. I included 11 cucumber and 7 cabbage pickles in The Complete Guide to Pickling, ranging from quick pickles to relishes to ferments.
In the cabbage category, curtido has become one of my favorites. This pickled cabbage slaw originated in El Salvador and typically combines cabbage, onion, and oregano, sometimes adding other flavors like carrot, chili, garlic, lime, and cilantro. It comes together in just 20 minutes, but letting it sit in salt for a couple of hours to draw out the vegetables’ natural liquid keeps the mixture from becoming watery. After it sits another 6 hours, the curtido is ready to eat—but it keeps in the fridge for several weeks.
Read more about preserving cabbage and learn to make Eight-Hour Curtido
Pickled Eggs
Harvest is in full swing, which means my canning and fermenting supplies dominate my mudroom and my refrigerator is packed with produce waiting to be preserved. But after the successful launch of my pickling cookbook, The Complete Guide to Pickling, last fall, I’ve made time for some recipes that make minimal use of my homegrown produce, including pickled eggs.
We have a rich supply of eggs on the farm where I garden. As I created pickled egg recipes for my cookbook, I fell in love with the rich colors of brine-infused egg whites against bright orange yolks. Since then, I’ve been playing with all sorts of brines—reused from other pickles and made from scratch—to produce a range of colors and flavors.
Pickled eggs keep and travel well, and we’ve been eating them regularly all summer. They have become staples for multiday cruises aboard The Blue Mule, and they make a great post-yoga snack or grab-and-go breakfast with the garden’s latest berries. I’ve learned a few tricks along the way that will help you when making pickled eggs.
Learn to reuse pickle brine and make pickled eggs
Fermenting Tools
When I was testing tools for The Complete Guide to Pickling, I had the most fun with tools for fermentation. Until I started writing the book, I had mostly fermented using tools and equipment already in my kitchen, relying on zip-close bags, small glass jars, and airlocks cobbled together with old canning lids. But when I realized I would be including more than 30 fermented recipes in the book, it was time to research and test some fermenting tools.
The surge of interested in fermented foods has opened opportunities for companies and entrepreneurs to present tools designed to make fermentation easy, manageable, and trouble free. Some of those companies were willing to send me their products to test as I created the recipes in the book.
My main takeaway was this: If you catch the fermentation bug, it’s worth investing in some tools. To create a healthy fermentation, you must keep the food submerged in the brine. You’ll get the best results if you can also limit airflow. Here are some of my favorite tools to help with both.
Read more about fermenting tools
Canning Tools for Picklers
Start making pickles, and you may quickly run out of refrigerator space. But don’t let that slow you down. Instead, consider canning your pickles.
As I explain in the opening chapter of my new book, The Complete Guide to Pickling, space is the primary reason I process pickles. Many pickles taste better and stay crisper, and fermented ones keep their probiotic goodness, when you don’t subject them to a boiling water bath. But some pickles hold up well to high heat, including beets, snap beans, and (when handled properly) cucumbers. Other pickled foods are ideal for canning, including many of the chutneys, sauces, relishes, and sauces in my book.
If you already can jams, jellies, and fruit in a boiling water bath, you likely have everything you need in your kitchen to can pickles. But if you’re new to canning or have been using some tool hacks to process your jars, a few tools will make your home canning easier, safer, and more reliable.
Read more about canning tools for picklers
Pickling Tools & Hacks
I’ve been hearing all week from people receiving their copies of The Complete Guide to Pickling. Now that it’s in your hands, I hope you’re excited to start making some tasty pickles. But where to begin, and what do you need?
In writing this book, I not only expanded my pickling repertoire but also tested a range of tools designed to make pickling easy and foolproof. I only had space to briefly describe some of those tools in the book, so this month I want to share some of my favorites and why you may want to add them to your pickling toolbox.
But let me be clear: you can make most of the pickles in The Complete Guide to Pickling using tools that are already in your kitchen or that you can pick up easily and cheaply. That’s how I first started pickling on my own, and I still reach for many of these tool hacks today. I recommend starting this way—you’ll quickly learn what should be at the top of your list for a tool upgrade.
Read more about pickling tools and hacks
Fun Pickles
In case you missed the news: my pickling book went on sale this week! The Complete Guide to Pickling is officially out in the world for you all to read and enjoy. As a bonus, I’ve also released The Pickled Picnic, a digital recipe collection that uses some of the pickles in my new book.
Both the book and the bonus collection are packed with fun recipes. But if you’ve been impressed by the flavors I’ve shared so far, just wait until you get to the final chapter of the book. These pickled foods will take your pickling experience to an entirely new level. I know, because that’s what they did for me.
Read more about fun pickles and learn to make Sweet Vinegar-Pickled Eggs
Fermented Pickles
My love of pickles jumped several levels the moment I tasted my first batch of fermented pickles. I grew up with some delicious pickles: homegrown veg stuffed into jars, covered in vinegar brine, and sealed to enjoy all year. And I share many of those classic family recipes, some with modern twists for safety or flavor, in my new cookbook, The Complete Guide to Pickling. But I must admit: If you want to make truly amazing pickles, ferment them.
I talk a lot about fermentation in my new book. Whether you’re new to fermenting or have already fallen for salt brine, be sure to check out Chapter 1, where I explain the differences between vinegar-preserved and fermented pickles and walk you through my fermentation process, step by step; I also describe some of my favorite fermenting ingredients and tools in that chapter and offer many shortcuts for simply using what you already have in your kitchen. Then flip to Chapter 4 and drool over the recipes for fermented pickles. But don’t stop there. As you become more familiar with the book, you’ll realize that I’ve sprinkled fermented recipes throughout the remaining chapters of the book: Scratch-Made Sriracha, Fermented Rhubarb Pickles, Tepache, and more.
Many people feel nervous about fermenting because of its wild nature. But really, it’s one of the simplest ways to pickle food. Once you know what to expect in terms of time, appearance, and smell, you too will likely become hooked on the texture and flavor of fermented pickles.
Read more about fermented pickles and learn to make Chinese-Inspired Brined Beans
