Pickles, or vegetables seasoned in a marinade based on vinegar, are a great addition to cheese, meat and burgers. They can be used for sandwiches, salads, and corks. In addition, various vegetables are suitable for pickles: cucumbers, peppers, zucchini, carrots, radishes, cauliflowers, patisons, even onions and garlic. How to make pickles?
A wonderful ingredient – vinegar
Vinegar has been known to mankind for a very long time. It was made by Babylonians already 4,000 years BC – they flavored it with herbs and spices, preserved it with vegetables and added it to water to make it drinkable. It was equally widely used by the ancient Romans. Pliny wrote that no other sauce flavors food and emphasizes its taste.
What can you pickle in vinegar?
The answer is simple: almost everything! Go to the market, choose the most beautiful vegetables (and fruits, because you can also marinate them), clean them, pack them in jars, then pour the prepared pickle – for example, with 200 grams of 10% spirit vinegar, 600 grams of water, 80 grams of sugar, 20 grams of salt (the ratio of sugar and salt to vinegar can be changed, depending on your preference). Pickles are ready very quickly, after an hour, two vinegars penetrate into the cellular structure of vegetables and give them an excellent taste, although some need 2-3 days to acquire full flavor, especially if we add spices to the marinade, the aromatic compounds need more time to spread in solution.
Pickled cucumbers in mustard marinade
Ingredients: 2-2.5 kg ground cucumbers
Pours: 4 cups of water, 1 cup of 10% vinegar, 2 x po cups of sugar, 5 teaspoons of delicacy mustard, 1 tablespoon of salt, 2 bay leaves, 4 grains of herb, 1/3 teaspoon of turmeric.
Preparation of pickles:
Peel and cut cucumbers (e.g. lengthwise into 4 parts or into thick slices), put in jars. Boil all the pickle ingredients for a few minutes. Cool the pickle with cucumbers. Pasteurize for 7 minutes (remove jars from hot water).
American zucchini pickles
And a slightly different recipe for American pickles. Since they are not originally pasteurized, we need to store them in the fridge and their shelf life is shorter. Of course, we can also pasteurize such pickles.
Ingredients: 1 large zucchini (peeled and cut into thin slices)
1 medium-sized onion
Floods: 2 tablespoons of salt, 2 cups of apple cider vinegar, 1 cup of sugar, 3 teaspoons of crushed mustard seeds (or so-called dry mustard), 1 teaspoon of turmeric, 3 grains of allspice and bay leaf, 3 grains of pepper.
Preparation of pickles:
Peel, slice and throw zucchini and onions into a large bowl. Salt and mix, then pour cold water (up to the vegetable level). Mix until the salt dissolves. We leave for about 1 hour, then strain and dry the vegetables, then put in jars.
We cook the marinade and pour vegetables into jars with it. The jars are screwed on well.
We store the pickles prepared in the fridge. We can also pasteurize (for 7-8 minutes), then they will be much more durable (and will not require a fridge).
