Quick pickling: It’s no big dill

For someone with memories of my mom in the kitchen for days at a time canning jar after jar of dill and bread & butter pickles, pickling never was on my radar as something I wanted to try. But in recent years, I’ve benefited from the pickling efforts of my self-proclaimed “food sister.” She’s pickled cucumbers, beets, carrots, green beans, jalapeños, banana peppers … you get the picture. Anything from her garden is fair game for pickling. But when she said she makes both “pickles” and “refrigerator pickles” and started tossing around words like “ferment,” I decided to take a closer look. 

Quick pickles (or refrigerator pickles) are just that – quicker and easier to make than pickles that are processed and typically sealed in airtight Mason jars. Canning or fermenting has a much longer (one to 5 years) shelf life than the quick pickling method (about 1 month) and fermented pickles have a deeper flavor. Perhaps the most popular “ferment” is kimchi, which has been referred to by Grubhub as the “national dish of Korea” and by The Atlantic as “the fermented food that made it big” across America.

I asked my sister about kimchi and discovered that although she had never tried kimchi, she (not surprisingly) had jars of cabbage (soon to be sauerkraut) sitting about her house actively fermenting as we spoke. I couldn’t keep up. 

Once I was clear on the difference, quick pickling seemed to be the place to start. Pickling onions is super easy and rewards you with such pretty color. While you can eat them the same day, they are better after sitting for a few days. Basically, you slice a red onion and make a pour-over brine of vinegars, water, salt and sugar. It’s really that easy. My daughter had sent me a recipe for Quick Pickled Onions that calls for maple syrup. I love having a jar in my fridge to add a nice crunch to tuna sandwiches, veggie burgers and this Smoky Cauliflower Chimichurri Bowl. The first time I made them they were gorgeous and the second time I used honey for sweetener and didn’t achieve quite the same color. But maybe it was the onion itself?

Then I came across this little pickling project from Feasting at Home … and, between the cute WECK jars (a MUST for the cute and colorful show-offy factor) and the fact that I basically had all the ingredients on hand, I was sold.

What a genius way to use my squash. Just a few days ago, I had picked up zucchini, patty pan squash, garlic and Hungarian wax peppers from my local CSA. I was off to the grocery to buy dill and seriously, is this the only way to buy fresh dill seed – in 6-foot stalks? Me and my dill walking to the car. Dilly dilly.

These will be great on a pulled pork sandwich or perhaps street tacos. However, there are two changes I’d make next time. I don’t own a mandoline – did I mention that my same sister sliced the tip of her finger off in a previous kitchen accident? Not funny. Oh boy. Anyhow, I used my food processor to get uniform slices, but hand-cut thicker slices would have provided a heftier crunch and let the colorful slices hold their own on a Thanksgiving relish tray. 

Here are a couple more tips for vibrant color: add turmeric to banana peppers and a little beet juice in your brine when pickling red onions.

Last I talked to my sister, she was experimenting with Asian pear kimchi using the pears from her husband’s family orchard in Southern Oregon. I’m looking forward to tasing this concoction and putting bets on it’ll taste better than the watermelon rind she pickled one year.