How to Pickle Vegetables - Recipes for Runner Beans, Green Tomatoes, Courgette (Zucchini) Pickle (2024)

FAQs

How do chefs quickly pickle vegetables? ›

Place the vinegar, water, salt, and sugar (if using) in a small saucepan over high heat. Bring to a boil, stirring to dissolve the salt and sugar. Pour the brine over the vegetables, filling each jar to within 1/2 inch of the top. You might not use all the brine.

Pickled zucchini soak up some of the pickling spice flavor better than cucumbers. This version is garlicky, spicy, and so good.

Cucumbers are the classic pickle, but this brine works with anything from zucchini or yellow squash to cherry tomatoes to bell peppers.

To make a 1 pint jar of pickles, combine 1-cup white vinegar and ½ cup of water with 1-tablespoon sugar and ½ tablespoon of salt. Bring brining vegetable mixture to a boil and cook 3 minutes or until dry ingredients have dissolved. 3. Pack for pickling.

Most pickle recipes call for distilled white vinegar. This is the clear, colorless vinegar made by fermenting grains. It has a mellow aroma, tart acid flavor and does not affect the color of light-colored vegetables or fruits.

Pickling is most often accomplished by canning produce in a vinegar-brine, most often using the water bath canning method, or by wild fermentation, using fermentation equipment like a pickling crock or a fermentation kit like the Perfect Pickler.

Simply prepare the vegetables, place in jars, pour over the hot brine, let the jars cool slightly, and refrigerate them. Let the pickles chill for about 24 hours, for thin sliced veggies and approximately 48 hours for things like whole green beans, or cucumber spears. The jars will keep several weeks in the fridge.

Use Calcium Chloride

Sea salt is sodium chloride. In this case, we're talking about calcium chloride! These little granules, which dilute quickly in water, are THE trick to crunchy pickles, as they prevent the enzymes from softening the pickle during lacto-fermentation.

Companion Plants to Avoid

It's not a good idea to mix zucchini or summer squash with another vining ground crop. For example, don't plant cucumbers and zucchini together, as the vines will become enmeshed and may even choke one another out.

Like most fruits, zucchini can be consumed raw, providing that you wash the zucchini first to remove any potential bacteria or pesticides lingering on the skin.

What kind of vinegar is best for pickling cucumbers? ›

I like my pickles on the tangier side, so I add a bit more vinegar to water in this recipe. If you like sweet pickles, you can add sugar to the brine (I personally don't). What kind of vinegar to use? I prefer white distilled vinegar because it is colorless and offers a great tart flavor.

Produce must be fresh when pickled. Avoid using waxed supermarket produce. Select the most uniform, unspoiled produce.

This is a basic 3-2-1 pickle recipe—three parts vinegar, two parts water, one part sugar. Salt and spices are totally up to you. You can also reduce the amount of sugar for a more savory pickle brine.

Vinegar is the most important ingredient in quick-pickle recipes. Without an adequate amount, the pickles will not be safe to eat. Use any vinegar with 5% acidity. Caution: Do not reduce the amount of vinegar or increase the amount of water in a recipe.

The basic method is to pack your fresh produce & any other spices into sterilized canning jars, pour a vinegar-based pickling brine into the jars to completely submerge the produce, and then preserve the jars with the water bath canning method. Certain produce, like asparagus, is blanched before pickling.

Some people pour the pickle juice directly over the veggies, others swear by boiling the pickle brine first. If you boil the brine first and pour it - still hot - over the veggies, it does seem to absorb into the veggies a little faster.

No, there are other methods for pickling, including quick pickling and refrigerator pickling. But this pickling method does call for boiling the brine. This process helps bloom the flavors of the ingredients and help speed up the pickling process when it's added to the fresh vegetables or fruit.

Mix the pickling liquid and fill each jar to the top. Screw the lid on tight and let your veggies pickle in the fridge for at least 20 minutes. But, the longer you let them marinate the better. You can store these quick pickled veggies in the fridge for a couple of weeks.