Doris and Jilly Cook » pickles

Mixed Vinegar Pickle #1

dorisandjilly — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 21:27:22 +0000

The July Can Jam stumped me. It wasn’t so much the trans-Atlantic translation problem of “marrows” as the fact that my favorite pickle, a just barely tangy half sour, isn’t acidic enough to can. Then I found a jar of cornichons in my basement (Linda Zeidrich’s recipe, of course). I’m usually fairly diligent about labeling my jars, but this time, I apparently forgot, and I frankly have no idea how long it’s been there. My best guess? 2007. Please don’t tell the USDA. I opened it anyway, and let me tell you: those pickles were DIVINE. Having been stewing in vinegar and spices—no sugar—for at least two years, those things were so tart that I believe they may have stripped some enamel off my teeth. Tart, but delicious.

So, that did it. This year, I have decided, will be the year of vinegar pickles. Sure, I’ve got a quart or two of half sours in various stages of fermentation floating around my kitchen, but I’m hoping to can at least half a dozen pints of pure pucker pickles for my winter enjoyment. This is a mixed batch of random vegetables, including the obligatory cucumbers and zucchinis, but the recipe is fairly flexible. You could certainly add cauliflower, beans, celery, asparagus…you get the idea. Ziedrich recommends a 20-minute water-bath processing time for a version that includes mostly easily pickled things (cucumbers, peppers, onions) plus just a few carrots. If you’re planning on using lots of carrots, you’ll probably need to increase the time, but not necessarily by much. Remember, even the sturdy pickled beet only need 30 minutes. In any case, I’m not a carrot-canning expert, so change the vegetable proportions at your own risk. Please, please, please do not change the ratio of water to vinegar, but feel free to add sugar to taste.

Stuff the following things in a pint jar, in more or less the amount recommended:

3 kirby-size cucumbers
About half of a 5″ zucchini or yellow squash, cut into spears
One medium garden carrot, cut into thin spears
2 hot wax peppers, slit down the side
4 jar-length pieces of fennel, with feathers attached
1 clove garlic
1/4 t. peppercorns
1 sprig thyme
1 sprig tarragon

Combine 2 3/4 c. vinegar (I used cider vinegar) with 2 c. water and 1 1/2 T. kosher salt. Bring to a boil. Pour this over your vegetables. You’ll have canning liquid leftover—just stash it in the fridge until the next time you’re ready to assemble another jar of garden delights. Adjust two-piece canning lids and process 20 minutes in a boiling-water bath. You don’t have to wait three years to open them, but do give them at least three weeks to let the vinegar do its work.

Pickled Beets with Fennel

dorisandjilly — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 12:55:16 +0000

I had no idea that so many people had such a strong aversion to beets. My beet class last weekend was somewhat under-enrolled, and I kept getting e-mails that said, more or less, “I really want to come and learn how to can, except that I can’t stand beets!” How can I convince you that beets are delicious, nutritious, and beautiful to boot? Will this post help?

Picked beets were a staple in my house as a kid growing up. My mother always goes for your basic pickled beet: nothing but white vinegar, water, and sugar. I usually do, too, but on Saturday my CSA included several heads of fennel. Fennel and beets are a natural pair, so the few dedicated beet-loving souls who attended the Saturday class left with a slightly more sophisticated product. If you don’t like fennel, no problem—just leave it out. If, on the other hand, you like a spicy pickled beet, feel free to add any of the following (but probably not all at once) to your pickling jars: peppercorns, cloves, allspice, star anise, dill heads, garlic, or strips of hot pepper.

Beets are a low-acid food, so please don’t change the proportion of vinegar to water. You can, however, use cider vinegar, so long as it’s at least 5% acidity. Finally, the purpose of the sugar is merely to counteract the tartness of the vinegar and preserve the color—it’s not really involved in the safety equation. Feel free to add more or less, depending on your taste, or to substitute brown sugar, raw sugar, or a sugar substitute. I can’t predict what making all of these kinds of changes will do to the color and texture of your beets, but so long as your acid is 5%, it’s safe for water-bath canning. Finally, be sure to wait several weeks to let the beets develop their full flavor. Then devour at leisure.

Pickled Beets with Fennel

About five pounds of beets
One long fennel frond, cut into seven pieces
7 peppercorns
3 1/2 c. distilled white vinegar (5%)
1 1/2 c. water
1 1/2 c. sugar

1) Wash your beets, leaving the roots and 1″ of stems attached. Cook your beets your preferred way. Some options: pressure cooking, boiling, roasting, or wrapped in foil in the crock pot. Cool. If your beets are thoroughly cooked, the skins should slip right off. Leave small beets whole, but cut larger beets into bite-sized pieces (or slice, or quarter, or whatever appeals to you).

2) Make your canning solution. Combine the vinegar, water, and sugar in a small pan and bring to a boil. Meanwhile, heat water for a boiling water bath, warm your jar lids, and have 7 pint jars ready.

3) Place a piece of fennel and a single peppercorn in each jar. Transfer the beets to the jars and cover with hot syrup. Remove air bubbles and add more syrup if necessary, leaving 1/4″ headspace. Adjust two-piece lids. Process in a boiling-water bath for 30 minutes.

4) After the jars have cooled and you’ve checked for seals, be sure to remove the rings. The syrup is sticky, and the rings become difficult to remove if you leave them on too long. Once you’ve opened the jars, you might want to switch to a plastic lid, as the vinegar will quickly corrode a standard canning lid.

Learn to Can Beets

dorisandjilly — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 12:00:39 +0000

Hey kids! There’s still time to sign up for the “Beets Two Ways” class on Saturday, June 26th, at 1 PM. Beets can well, but because they’re a low-acid food, you can’t just pop them in a water bath. In this introductory class, we’ll cover how to pickle beets (making them safe for water-bath canning) as well as how to pressure can them. $25 covers all materials, and you’ll leave with a jar of beets.

What: Beets Two Ways Class
Where: Doris’s house, West Philadelphia
When: Saturday, June 26, 1 PM
How to Register: Send Doris an e-mail

See you then!

February Can Jam: CARROTS!

dorisandjilly — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 13:58:31 +0000

(Photo from Chris Campbell’s Flickr photostream)

Attention all canjammers! The focus of the February Tigress Can Jam is CARROTS.

Got that?

Yes, carrots.

The Tigress and I made this choice with both excitement and trepidation. The excitement because vegetables are new territory for many water-bath canners; the trepidation because carrots are a low-acid food, and therefore come with certain rules. So. Let’s be clear. No matter what you find on the internets, you absolutely have to add acid to carrots to make them safe to can. In fact, a lot of acid. So much acid, in fact, that the Tigress and I strongly encourage you—nay, insist!—that you start off with a published recipe, and tweak from there. (If you have a home pH meter and/or are a master food preserver, you get a free pass.) Think pickles, relishes, and chutneys. Once you’ve found a recipe you like, feel free to tinker with the spices, the balance of salt and sugar, the exact combination of vegetables, etc. HOWEVER, be sure that you are not reducing the proportion of acid to the food.

Let’s give an entirely hypothetical (as in, don’t try this at home) example. Say you have a recipe that includes 5 cups of carrots, 2 cups of cauliflower, a handful of herbs, 1 T of salt, 1/4 c. of sugar, and 3 cups of vinegar. It would be fine to reduce the cauliflower to 1 cup and add 1 cup of peppers, throw in some mustard seeds, and add more sugar. It would not be OK, though, to just add a cup of peppers without adding more vinegar, because then you’ve lowered the acid content (that is, raised the pH).

Um, if this is at all confusing, that means you should stick with the recipe.

Have fun, be careful, and remember to post your fabulous creations between Sunday, February 14 and midnight, Friday, February 19.

Happy canjamming!

Pickled Plums

dorisandjilly — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 11:55:47 +0000

It never would have occurred to me to pickle plums, but my friend Christina convinced me that pickled fruit was both delicious and indispensable. Hence, pickled plums. I made a couple of jars about a month ago and have been waiting until now so that I could taste them before sharing the recipe with all of you. I must confess: I’m underwhelmed. If you really like pickled fruit, you’ll like this—but they don’t necessarily taste like plums. Instead, they taste like vinegar, cinnamon, allspice, and cloves. If this appeals to you, go for it! And if not, do something else with your plums, because this won’t make you happy.

Pickled Plums

(adapted from Linda Ziedrich’s Joy of Pickling)

3 pounds Italian plums
2 3/4 c. cider vinegar
2 c. sugar
2 small cinnamon sticks
2 dried chile peppers
4 whole cloves
12 allspice berries

1) Make a syrup from the vinegar and sugar over a medium flame. Prick the plums with a fork or needle to keep them from bursting. Add the plums to the syrup and cook them until they’re heated through.

2) Meanwhile, bring a water bath to a boil and sterilize 2 pint jars; heat up two lids.

3) Take the jars out of the hot water and add the cinnamon stick, 1 pepper, 2 cloves, and 6 allspice berries to each jar. Add the plums. Cover them with syrup, leaving 1/2″ head space.

4) Now, you have a choice. Ziedrich says you can just add the hot lids, screw on the lids, and hope for the best. This makes me nervous, so I gave my jars a quick (~5 minutes) dip in a boiling water bath to ensure a good seal. If you have a few extra plums, just stick them in the refrigerator and forget about them for at least a month.

So, dear readers, I’m curious. Have you tried pickling fruit before? What am I missing?

Bok Choy Kimchi

dorisgoat — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 16:07:17 +0000

Philadelphia’s unexpected additional month of spring has been a boon for my bok choy. So far I’ve harvested at least six pounds from a single, 4 foot-long row. But my abundance of bok choy begs the question of what, exactly, to do with it. I do love the stuff, but you can only eat it steamed so many nights in a row before losing interest. Hence, kimchi.

For those readers not familiar with it, kimchi is kind of Korean pickle subject to neary infinite variations. Traditionally it was made by groups of women and stored through the winter (sometimes underground) in clay pots. The kind that you’re most likely to find at your local Asian grocery or Korean restaurant will have some kind of Asian cabbage, garlic, some kind of hot pepper seasoning, and lots of salt. Like most traditional pickles, however, there are as many kinds of kimchi as people who make it. Sometimes it has daikon radish; sometimes it has anchovies. Some people use fish sauce; others use pine nuts. As luck would have it, bok choy, with its big white stems and leafy greens, makes excellent kimchi.

I’m offering a recipe below loosely adapted from one in Linda Ziedrich’s wonderful Joy of Pickling, but I encourage you to experiment. Don’t mess with the proportion of salt, as you need a certain level of salinity to encourage the right kind of fermentation. Everything else, though, from the ingredients to the length of fermentation, is flexible. After six days my first batch was almost too pickle-y for my tastes, but the second batch came out absolutely perfect after only four days. Enjoy!

Bok Choy Kimchi

About 1 1/2 pounds bok choy (stems and leaves), cut into 2 inch squares
1 or 2 turnips, peeled and thinly sliced
1 to 2 T ginger, minced
1 to 2 T garlic, minced
6 scallions, cut into 2 inch pieces, then cut in half lengthwise
2 T hot or mild paprika (your choice: I liked it better hot)
6 cups water
4 1/2 T kosher salt (or 3 T pickling salt, if you have it)

1) Make your brine by dissolving the salt in water. Put the bok choy and the turnips in a large bowl and cover with brine. Weight the vegetables so that they stay submerged (see picture) and let sit for 12 to 24 hours.

2) Drain the vegetables, reserving the brine. Mix the remaining ingredients by hand, then stuff them into a large jar. I was able to make this batch fit into a regular-mouth quart mason jar, but you may need to use a bigger one, or use two, if you have more vegetables. Pour the brine over vegetables. Run a knife alongside the inside of the jar to release air bubbles and add more brine if needed. If you’re using a regular mouth jar and everything’s submerged up to the lid, just put the lid on. If you’re using a large jar and are having problems with things floating to the top, put a ziplock bag within the jar and fill it with brine. The goal is to prevent air from touching the vegetables.

3) Move the jar to a cool, dark place (ideally 68º: I used the basement) and let it sit for 3–6 days. After a day or two you should see bubbles rising to the surface. Taste it after a few days to see if it’s sour enough. When you’re happy with the pucker factor, stash it in your fridge, where it will keep for months (assuming you don’t eat it first).