Meredith - Pickling everything: foolproof recipes for sour, sweet, spicy, savory, crunchy, tangy treats

Copyright 2019 by Leda Meredith

All photographs by Leda Meredith, except for the following: : MonaMakela/iStockphoto.com

All rights reserved

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The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:

Names: Meredith, Leda, author.

Title: Pickling everything : foolproof recipes for sour, sweet, spicy, savory, crunchy, tangy treats / by Leda Meredith.

Description: New York, NY : Countryman Press, a division of W. W. Norton & Company Independent Publishers Since 1923, [2019] | Includes index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2018036641 | ISBN 9781682681794 (pbk.)

Subjects: LCSH: Canning and preserving. | FoodPreservation. | LCGFT: Cookbooks.

Classification: LCC TX601 .M46 2019 | DDC 641.4/2dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018036641

The Countryman Press

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A division of W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.

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978-1-68268-178-7 (e-book)

DEDICATION

This book is dedicated to my friend and fellow author Ellen Zachos. It was my pleasure to introduce Ellen to food preservation and foraging. It has been my honor to watch her turn those topics into wings and soar.

(Its Not Just the Garnish for Your Sandwich)

Living up to the title, Pickling Everything, might seem either difficult or impossible. Really, Leda? you ask, Everything?!

Yes, really. You can pickle almost any whole food including vegetables, fruits, meat, eggs, and even cheese. By whole food, I mean foods that are themselves and dont have a slew of laboratory-created ingredients. For instance, you can pickle apples. You cannot pickle something with apple flavoring and a long list of ingredients you cannot pronounce (well, technically you could but yuck!).

Historically, people likely pickled foods because pickling safely preserves fresh food that would otherwise spoil. And, perhaps, because it is one of the easiest forms of food preservation: it is so easy that none of the recipes in this book require canning (although many of them include optional canning instructions).

But pickling is more than a form of food preservation. It is also a way of turning mild-flavored ingredients into crunchy, tangy side dishes and intensely flavored condiments. Pickles can whet your appetite before a meal. That is one of the reasons that at restaurants in numerous countries around the world, an assortment of pickles often appears on your table before you even order. For example, sit down at a restaurant anywhere around the Mediterranean, and before youve even ordered, the table will be filled with spicy pickled peppers, turmeric-yellow pickled cabbage, olives, and glistening ruby slivers of pickled beets.

Pickles can cleanse your palate between courses, as with the Japanese gari (pickled ginger) served with sushi. Or pickles can help you digest a rich meal, as with Indian chutneys and Korean kimchi (yes, chutney and kimchi count as pickles). Many people all around the globe consider pickles an essential part of almost every meal.

Pickles are an easy way to preserve fresh food and a way to create wonderful taste combinations that enhance your meal. But theres more: pickles can even make us healthier. Of all the forms of food preservation, pickling is one of only two that I am aware of that have the potential to actually add health benefits to the food that the food did not possess in its raw state (more about that later). The second, non-pickling method, is dehydrating mushrooms in sunlight to increase their vitamin D content (yes, Im serious).

Before we go any further, lets get clear on what I mean by pickling.

According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, a pickle is an article of food that has been preserved in a brine or vinegar solution. (There is another definition listed, which is a difficult situation, as in to be in a pickle. Im ignoring this last meaning.)

Hidden in that dictionary definition is the fact that there are actually two kinds of pickling. Pickles that start out in a light salt brine and then ferment themselves into an acidic food are one kind. Those that add an already acidic ingredient, such as vinegar, are another kind. This book includes instructions and recipes for making both types, and there is more information about both methods in the next chapter.

It may be a clich to say that there is more you can do with pickles than just serve them alongside a sandwich (not that a pickle with your sandwich isnt absolutely lovely). But clichs start out with some truth, and the truth is that from the last quarter of the twentieth century until recently, Americans didnt do much else with pickles. I consider those decades brief, dark blips in the otherwise illustrious and multifaceted career of the pickle.

Fortunately, we have rediscovered pickles, and fallen in love with them perhaps even more than in any previous era of our history. There are now vendors at farmers markets around the country selling pickles and nothing but pickles. In my old neighborhood in Brooklyn, NY, there are shops whose exclusive wares are jars of pickles. Pickling workshops sell out, and it is once again a custom to give a jar of your homemade pickles as a gift.

Probiotic fermented pickles, in particular, have become crazily popular. This is partly because of their health benefits. But I think it is also because making something so tasty with almost zero cost and no fancy equipment, simply by employing healthy bacteria to do most of the job for you, is sexy in a renegade way.

The probiotic (and prebiotic) components of fermented pickles such as Half-Sours () contain good-for-you bacteria similar to those in yogurt. The more we learn about the bacteria in our guts, the more we realize how important they are to our health. You could swallow a bunch of expensive pills from the health food store to get those probiotics or you could make your own live food pickles that have the same health benefits and taste good to boot.

THE LOVELY CUSTOM OF JAR RETURN

It was an elderly lady named Lynette Muller who taught me the excellent tradition of always returning the jar after you finish the preserves someone gave you. I used to give Lynette a jar of homemade pickles or jelly on her birthday, and the jar always came back to me clean and ready to reuse. If she had time, she would fill the jar with something shed made that was as yummy as what was originally inside. If she was short on time, she would simply wash and thoughtfully return the jar. This custom of giving back the jar dates from the Depression era (or probably even earlier), when fruits and vegetables could be had for free from the garden or farm but canning jars cost cash on the table. It is a lovely and practical way to show gratitude, and one I hope you will continue. It also lets the person who gave you the jar know that you ate up all of the homemade goodness inside it.