Aside from cucumbers i quick pickled some cherry tomatoes. Do not recommend. I also did some radishes, which I do recommend.
Pro tip: put a sliced half of a habanero in my last jar of cucumbers and it was p. good, and when the cucumbers were gone I fished out the pickled habanero slices to add spice to my ramen
yeah the only problem is accidentally adding too much for my baby palate and it's kind of a pain fishing the little slices out of the jar
Side note but what genius decided to make mason jar lids and not use stainless steel. I know the gum seal part is only good for one use canning, but I could reuse them all day for pickles. Except they're rusty as now and I gotta buy new lids, like i'm made of lid money :rage-cry:
well the regular mason jar O ring lids do provide a hermetic seal, that's why they're only supposed to be useable once though. The weird textured ring around the inside of the lid is some kind of gum substance that melts while canning and forms a seal. But I don't need no fancy sealin' for quick pickles, got dang it! And I'm too lazy to hand wash lids so I guess this is on me for running them through the dish washer knowing they could rust
oh hey that's what I put my marijuana in (when I have it at least :yea: ) TIL
Stainless steel is harder than regular steel and thus costs more to work.
Is my guess
Love making spicy giardiniera, been making enough for my to put some in my lunch every day. Recent batch I added fennel bulb, which based on it by itself I was really worried it would be too licoricy, but it's actually really subtle. Overall, I like mixing up what veg a throw in each batch. Got cheap bulk seeds for it at my local Asian market btw, waaaay cheaper than any other store near me.
Other than that, I've been wanting to try something fermented, like kimchi, but haven't gotten around to it yet.
Cabbage ie saurkraut is easy as fuck. Kimchi but its like 100x more work.
Keep in mind not all pickles are fermented, a lot are just a hot vinager brine poured over.
If you're just looking to fill jars and it doesn't have to be pickled: apple sauce and apple butter. Wait for apples to be in season and cheap at the store, then core cut up and cook down. Add a little bit of cinnamon, and maybe a tiny bit of sugar if it needs. Stop cooking when it looks like applesauce, or keep cooking off more moisture and until you get apple butter.
It can absorb a lot of flavors, while staying very crisp and juicy.
Watermelon rind pie is almost a sweet-pickled rind in a pastry shell.
My mains are kraut and kimchi. Pepper paste is also really good, though I don't usually can it since it lasts forever in the damn fridge.
if you like pickles, it is cucumber season right now in the northern hemisphere. a great time to get some flowering dill and farm fresh cucumbers that are the right size.
Thin sliced red onion and cover in white vinegar, pop in fridge.
Made a salad tonite with napa, carrot and fried instant ramen broken up then just piled in some pickled red onion and a little of the vinegar for the only dressing/seasoning and bam, was delicious.
I’ll second sauerkraut. It’s just cabbage and salt at the most basic. I don’t even remember if you have to put any extra water in. You’ll proabably want one of those water seal dohickies while it ferments and maybe a fermenting stone/weight. I have some made from glass.
Don't need water for sauerkraut. Just smoosh till the juices come out. Should be able to submerge it all with just that.
My recipe for anyone who's interested:
Cut cabbage into stripes and layer into jar with salt, pounding down a wooden masher thingy. I do two percent salt. Make sure whatever container you put it in lets air out but not in. Wait a couple of weeks or even months. If it smells and looks good and is crunchy (have heard slimy is bad, but that never happened to me), it's good to go.
To cook sweat an onion in oil, add kraut and bay leaf, peppercorns and juniper (or whatever the fuck you want), some water or white wine so the bottom doesn't burn and simmer with lid on for half an hour to one hour. It gets softer the longer it's in there. Pasteurized from the shops is already cooked and doesn't need that long. Goes well with fatty stuff like sausages.
Or eat raw for the yummy lactobacteria! Granted, there isn't tons of evidence to suggest that consuming protobiotics through your mouth hole actually improves your gut ones besides your gut ones feeding on the dead bodies of the ingested ones.
