Over the years we’re done a lot of pickles of various sorts. This page is going to have recipes, pix of the finished product and links to process pix, if we have them, even some links to other folks’ videos.

There are no internal links but this is the order in which the recipes appear and then various galleries of pickle pix are below that and then a list of links to reports where they’re referenced. I’m going to try for the same order, but don’t take bets…

Standard vegetable pickles

  • Basic Pickling Broth
  • Pickled Asparagus
  • Pickled Beans
  • Pickled Beets
  • Pickled Cabbage
  • Pickled Carrots
  • Pickled Cucumbers
  • Pickled Garlic
  • Pickled Mushrooms
  • Pickled Onions
  • Pickled Parsnip
  • Pickled Radish
  • Pickled Squash
  • Pickled Turnips
  • Mixed veg recipes
  • Purchased Pickles – mentions and pix

Non-pickle “Pickles”

  • Pickled Eggs
  • Pickled Sausage
  • Pickled nuts (whut?)
  • Pickled Cheese (whutx2?)

Also, many of the pickles we’ve made are mixtures of various veg, which seems to work one heck of a lot better than just one thing in many cases. So the “mixed” gallery is at the end of this. Each section has recipe (or description of what to add to, or what to change the basic recipe), gallery, then links.

Pickling Broth and General Directions

Basic Pickling Broth – The is the general recipe that’s used for most of our pickles. It’s a modern recipe for what my Baba called, “Winter pickle” and shows up in cold climate cookery, although it’s mostly known from ingredients lists or descriptions, rather than recipes. Always use glass or enameled pots to cook this and glass or heavy plastic (Like TupperwareTM)  to store in! …and watch the “peak” dates on some of these foods. It makes a difference.

Pickling broth – small batch
• dozen garlic cloves
• 1 small onion
• 1 1/2 cup water
• 1 1/4 cup white vinegar
• 1/2 cup sugar
• scant 1/4 cup salt (maybe closer to 1/8, depends on taste)
• 1 Tbsp dill weed
• 1 tsp celery seed
• 1 Tbsp caraway seed (or various)

  1. Peel, stem and root the onions.
  2. Cut in ½, then slice across the grain.
  3. Put into your keeping container
  4. Peel the garlic. Put in the pot.
  5. Add the rest of the ingredients to the pot.
  6. Bring to a boil, stirring well.
  7. Pour into keeping container, once it’s cool enough to handle.
  8. Cool in fridge.
  9. Store in frig, ready to eat next day, keeps several weeks. We’ve saved it as long as 5 months.

We make this stuff by the gallon and add spices to individual pickles as necessary.

Gallon Recipe for Pickling broth – This does not make quite a full gallon and amounts are not exact (not for someone who is OCD, anyway). You can boil some more vinegar to top it up or just leave it.
• 2 garlic bulbs
• 2 lg onion
• 6 cup water
• 5 cup cider vinegar
• 2 cup sugar
• ½-1 cup salt (depends on taste)
• 1/3 cup (may be changed for other spices/herbs)
• 1/3 cup (may be changed for other spices/herbs)
• 1/3 cup caraway seed (may be changed for other spices/herbs)
1. Peel, stem and root the onions.
2. Cut in ½, then slice across the grain.
3. Put into the gallon container. (You can feed ½ ring at a time.)
4. Peel the garlics. Put in the pot.
5. Add the ingredients to the pot.
6. Bring to a boil.
7. Stir well.
8. Pour into gallon container.
9. Repeat with other ½ of ingredients.
10. Cool in fridge.
11. Store in frig, ready to eat next day, keeps several weeks.

The original one that we started from – Cat’s Fridge Pickle

1 1/2 cup water
1 1/4 cup white vinegar
1/2 cup sugar
scant 1/4 cup salt  (maybe closer to 1/8)

  1. Bring to a boil, cool.
  2. Fill container with veggies.  I use mostly sliced cucumbers and add a couple garlic cloves, onion slices and celery stalks with tops for flavor.  I’ve also used green cherry tomatoes.  Bell peppers or asparagus tips might also be good.
  3. Pour cooled vinegar solution over veggies.
  4. Dried dill weed:  I ‘ve never measured, just sprinkle some over, cover and shake and repeat til it looks right.
    Store in frig, ready to eat next day, keeps several weeks.  Glad you enjoyed it!  Love Cat

Pickled Vegetables

Asparagus Pickle – This may be the most yummed-over pickle that we’ve made. Most of them get a “yeah, that’s good!” out of folks, but this one for fans of asparagus is the one they gravitate to and take home. It’s a “short” pickle. It’s good overnight, best from 2-5 days and then deteriorates.

This works best in a tall narrow container.

Rinse off the asparagus. Measure one spear against your container so that the point of the spear is 1/4 inch from the top and cut all the others to that measure. (Ends can be used in soup or stew if peeled.) Put the asparagus in the container, points up, fill with cold broth and put a slice of onion on top so the spears stay down in the broth. Add a little broth to fill it right up and then when you screw down the lid it will run over a bit. (Yes, stand the container in a plate or the sink!) Put in fridge. Can be eaten the 2nd day, but is best from 2-5 days. Beyond that the sulphur compounds develop. (ew….)

Pickled Beans – Are a good way to keep ready-to-eat beans around during the cold months. Most often we’ve done these with the standard pickling broth recipe and canned beans: black, white, kidney and garbanzo.

Basic method is drain and rinse canned beans, put in container and cover with pickling broth. You can play with the spices on these or use lots of onion or garlic, else they’re a touch bland.

Something we twigged to, only recently, is that only broadbeans and garbanzo/chickpeas are Old World. It’s marginally possible that some of the “field peas” that are mentioned are a type of bean that’s been re-labeled, since, and actually existed in the middle ages. It’s hard to tell from the records, and I haven’t seem much that was definitive. It’s also possible that they might have been just a small, mutated broadbean that was only cultivated for a short while.

Pickled Beets – Canned pickled beets are so easy that we’ve depended on those more than making our own, except with the pickled eggs. 

There’s a very good video of how to make traditional Czech pickled beets (canned) on this site. http://www.czechcookbook.com/pickled-beets-zavarena-cervena-repa/

Pickled Cabbage – Most people just say “sauerkraut” as soon as you mention this, but pickled cabbage is a distinctly different flavor from the fermented type. It has more spice than sour and is crunchy. This is not our standard recipe, but based on Townsend’s. The Red Cabbage Pickle made later on was the standard pickling broth.

Pickled Cabbage

  • medium head of cabbage (or 2 pkg deli slaw mix)
  • 2 onion
  • 4 Ball jars
  • 8 cups vinegar
  • 4 cups water
  • 1 cup salt
  • 1 ½ cup sugar
  • Caraway, Black Mustard Seed, Celery seed, Allspice, Clove (jars), Ginger (jars)
  1. Shred Cabbage.
  2. Put about a 1” layer into your jar and pound on it to pack it down.
  3. Add a thin slice of onion.
  4. Repeat until that jar is full, then do the rest.
  5. Add 5 whole cloves, 2 whole allspice and a good slice of ginger to the top of each jar.
  6. Put the vinegar and the rest into a large pot and bring to a boil.
  7. Pour over the cabbage and lay the lid on loosely.
  8. Let sit for half an hour.
  9. Bang the jars on the table to get the bubbles out and then fill right to the brim with the broth, so that when the lids were screwed down they run over a touch. You’re trying to exclude as much air as possible.
  10. Again, lay the lids on loosely and when cool, screw them down, then put the pickles in the fridge.
  11. Wait at least 3 days before serving.

Pickled Carrot – We’ve mixed these with other vegetables most often, but have made them by themselves, just to try them. These are just the standard pickling broth and method.

Pickled cauliflower – We’ve only made this once, right at the beginning, and it was forgettable enough that I didn’t even remember it until I saw it in the picture and write-up. I think this is because it’s a touch bland and we have done much with pickling peppers, which are the usual accompaniment in the grocery.

  • Cauliflower – http://wp.me/p4yKTJ-6y – from when we were first experimenting with pickles! mention, but doesn’t show the pickle

Pickled Cucumber – We haven’t done a lot with cucumber pickles, mostly because they’re so common and easily purchased. Not only that, the group seems to be far more fond of fresh cucumber slices in sour cream with dill!

  • Pickled cucumber, onion, carrot and turnip – http://wp.me/p4yKTJ-6y – from when we were first experimenting with pickles! Big picture and mention

Pickled Jicama – This has been added to a number of other pickles made with the standard method, but is only mentioned in one place. Every time we make this, though, people go hunting for more of it! The only problem is that it’s a 7-day-pickle. Good the day after it’s made, peaks a day or two later and after a week, toss it!

Pickled Mushrooms – These are a common pickle for us to make and we’re tried several different recipes.

Pikld Funges – an old (probably badly researched) pickle recipe from the 70’s

  • Original recipe makes 8 servings
  • 1 onion, thinly sliced
  • 1/3 cup red wine vinegar
  • 1/3 cup vegetable oil
  • 1 tablespoon brown sugar
  • 1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
  • 2 (12 ounce) cans whole mushrooms, drained

Directions

Bring onion, vinegar, oil, sugar, and Dijon mustard to a boil in a saucepan. Add mushrooms and simmer until liquid is slightly reduced, 5 to 6 minutes. Transfer mixture to a covered container and chill. Drain before serving.

Pickled mushrooms (Anja)

  • 3 cups apple cider vinegar
  • 1 ½ cups water
  • ¾ cup brown sugar
  • 1/8 – ¼ cup salt
  • 2 Tbsp mustard seed
  • 1 Tbsp caraway seed
  • 1 medium onion
  • ½ pound of fresh sliced mushrooms
  1. Start the vinegar, water, sugar and salt in a pot on the stove and bring to a boil, stirring to make sure the sugar dissolves and doesn’t stick.
  2. While that’s going grind the mustard and then add the caraway and grind some more.
  3. Add to the pot
  4. Slice the onion and add that.
  5. Add the mushrooms.
  6. When it comes back to a boil, turn to low, cover and let simmer until the mushrooms and onions look cooked, 20 minutes to ½ an hour.
  7. Put hot into a canning jar and screw the lid down.
  8. Loosen the lid every half hour until it’s only warm to the touch, no longer hot, then refrigerate. When cold, tighten the ring down.

Pickled Mushrooms – Mar11,2017 by Mistress Leoba of Lecelade (Anja’s note – Either we didn’t follow her recipe well, or something in the ingredients was amiss, beyond the sub of horseradish for pepper. These were *far* too strong for most people and a little bitter. )

TO PICKLE MUSHROOMS
Take your Buttons, clean ym with a spunge & put ym in cold water as you clean ym, then put ym dry in a stewpan & shake a handfull of salt over ym, yn stew ym in their own liquor till they are a little tender; then strain ym from ye liquor & put ym upon a cloath to dry till they are quite cold. Make your pickle before you do your Mushrooms, yt it may be quite cold before you put ym in. The pickle must be made with White-Wine, White-Pepper, quarter’d Nutmeg, a Blade of Mace, & a Race of ginger.

Take your Buttons, clean then with a spunge and put them in cold water as you clean them, then put them dry in a stewpan and shake a handful of salt over them, then stew them in their own liquor till they are a little tender; then strain them from the liquor and put them upon a cloth to dry until they are quite cold. Make your pickle before you do your mushrooms, so it may be quite cold before you put them in. The pickle must be made with white wine, white pepper, quartered nutmeg, a blade of mace, and a race of ginger.

Contrary to popular belief, there were some vegetables that were extremely popular in Elizabethan times. One dish that was becoming more popular was the Sallat, which like modern salads were composed of leaves, vegetables such as cucumbers and mushrooms, nuts and dried fruits. They were arranged to look beautiful on a plate, but of course there were times of year when popular sallat foods simply weren’t available. This is where pickling recipes like this one would have come in – in the autumn when mushrooms were plentiful, they would have been gathered and pickled en-masse to be available all year round.

Ingredients

  • 5kg mushrooms – 11lb
  • 1 tsp white pepper corns
  • 500mL white wine – 17 oz, a generous pint
  • 1/4 of a whole nutmeg
  • 1/2 cup of salt
  • 1/2 tsp mace
  • 1 piece dried ginger

Method

  1. In a mortar and pestle, roughly crush the pepper corns and mace. Using a grater, grate the ginger and the nutmeg (grate a whole nutmeg until you have used a quarter of it).
  2. Put the spices and the wine in a pot and bring to the boil. Reduce to a simmer and cook for about 10 minutes, then leave to cool completely.
  3. Wash the mushrooms and remove the stalks.
  4. Put the mushrooms in a heavy bottomed pan, then throw the salt over them. Heat the mushrooms well and cook, stirring frequently, until the mushrooms have coloured and shrunk considerably. A lot of liquid will leach out of them.
  5. Strain the mushrooms, and put on a towel so they can dry and cool.
  6. When both the mushrooms and pickling wine are completely cool, put the mushrooms into a sterilised jar and pour over the pickling liquid. If there is any spice residue, pack this on top. Ensure the mushrooms are completely covered by the liquid.
  7. Keep the jar of mushrooms in a cool, dark place and leave to steep – the longer they steep the better.

Notes

Lady Fettiplace would not have had access to fresh ginger, and if you can find whole dried ginger it’s a revelation. I found some in an Indian grocers and it smells incredible.

Mace and nutmeg come from the same plant, Myrstica fragrans. Nutmeg is the seed in the middle of the fruit, and mace is a lacy membrane that surrounds this seed. Even though they come from the same plant, they have quite different tastes, and you can’t really substitute extra nutmeg for mace.

You will lose a lot of volume from the mushrooms as you are stewing them in the salt. We lost over 600g of weight – at the end of the process, we had 830g of mushrooms after starting out with 1.5kg.

Pickled Onions – We’ve only done these once by themselves, so far, even if onions end up in most of the pickles that we do. We used pearl onions, going by a Townsend’s method, but I think that plain red onions are going to have to get tried, at some point.

Townsend’s Method

  • Pearl Onions (we used one bag….way too few)
  • Malt vinegar ½ a pipkin, maybe a couple of cups? (We used distilled)
  • Salt oz
  • ½ tsp peppercorn
  • 3-4 clove
  • Tbsp. sliced fresh ginger
  • allspice
  • bayleaf
  1. Scald and peel onions
  2. Put the bayleaf in your jar
  3. Add onions when cool.
  4. Heat Malt vinegar with the spices.
  5. Pour over onions and seal

Pickled Radish – These have always been used as extras in other pickles. Something to try in the future!

Not made by us, but served at feasts or potlucks

Non-pickle Pickled Things

Pickled Eggs – These are a favorite and have been made many, many times. A lot of the time these have been made as a “cheat”, where you take hard-boiled, peeled and cooled eggs, dump a can of purchased pickled beets over the top, top up with pickle broth and call it good! I’ve made them with plain beets added to the broth, as in the recipe, but apparently not for our potlucks or feasts….or at least not that I can tell from the reports and pictures. Probably a time thing…

To make the eggs and beet pickle it depends a little on what you want. The easy method is to hard-boil and peel your eggs and pour 1 cup of pickle broth to 1 can of pickled beets in with the eggs. Make sure they’re covered by the broth. The harder method is to peel chop and boil raw beets in with the broth (simmer until cooked) and then add that to the eggs, adding plain pickle to cover the eggs. For this feast, I also added a can of plain sliced cooked beets and the eggs used were duck eggs from the DuckMeister! (omgs, good!)

Cheat method

Pickled Sausage – We haven’t tried this, yet, but it sounds intriguing. http://www.czechcookbook.com/pickled-sausage-recipe-utopenci/

Pickled Nuts – – This smells wonderful and tasted pretty good. Anja has a walnut allergy, so the two nuts were separated and the pecans that she can eat were done first.

Pickled nuts – Anja has done candied nuts for decades, but hasn’t found pickled ones, anywhere, despite remembering eating them as a kid. The only recipes online were either for what she would call “candied nuts” or for green walnuts, so she decided to experiment.

  • 2 cup apple cider vinegar
  • ¼ cup salt
  • 2 cup white sugar
  • 2 cups whole walnuts
  • ½ cup whole pecans
  • Cardamom, cinnamon, chopped nutmeg, whole allspice (no, I didn’t measure)
  1. Boil, then turn to simmer.
  2. Add pecans. Cook 5. Skim off into jar. Fill with broth.
  3. Add walnuts. Cook 10. Skim off into jar. Fill with broth. Wasn’t quite enough broth to cover so added some water and honey. .

Pickled Pecans/Walnuts – https://wp.me/p8ngGY-UI – A few process pix, plus others, recipe

Pickled Cheese – Only just tried this one from this recipe. The texture is odd, though. …and we didn’t have glass but tupperware, and had to replace the peppers with horseradish. …and yes, the translations are awkward at best.

Nakladany Syr – Pickled cheese isn’t really pickled the way we think of pickles. It’s an altered cheese, soaked in herb-infused oil. This is something that Anja ate in Prague and remembered from her childhood.

Nakladany Hermelin – Pickled Cheese – Nakladany Hermelin or Pickled cheese is popular pub snack that comes with beer. It’s prepared from Hermelín cheese (literally means “ermine”) a Czech version of Camembert cheese. As always there are many different recipes and ingredients. Let’s try a basic homemade pickled cheese. Pickled cheese is served with bread and cold beer. Nakladany hermelin can stay in your fridge for several weeks. (from http://www.czechcuisine.net/nakladany-hermelin-pickled-cheese/ )

Ingredients

  • big mason jar
  • 6-8 pieces of Camembert like cheese
  • 3-4 onions
  • 8 cloves of garlic
  • peppercorns
  • allspice
  • bayleaf
  • hot peppers (goat horns peppers)
  • 1 teaspoon of paprika or chilli
  • salt
  • oil (sunflower oil)

Directions

  1. Slice each cheese in the middle. Slice onion.
  2. Cover each cheese slice with paprika (or chilli), minced garlic and salt. Put the slices back together.
  3. Put in jar some onion, bayleaf, few peppercorns and allspice, then 2-3 cheeses and hot pepper. Again onion and repeat layers until the jar is filled up.
  4. Pour oil in the jar so every ingredient is submerged.
  5. Close jar and put in fridge for 3-5 days.
  6. Pickled cheese is served with bread and cold beer. Nakladany hermelin can stay in your fridge for several weeks.

Our version, Nakledny syr

Ingredients

  • Tupperware cold cuts box
  • 2 pound round brie
  • 2 onions
  • 4 heaping soup spoons of garlic
  • 5 dollops horseradish sauce
  • 4 bayleaf
  • 1 Tbsp mixed oregano and basil
  • oil (mix of olive and peanut)

Directions

  1. Slice cheese in the middle.
  2. Slice onion.
  3. Cover bottom of box with one onion, bayleaves and garlic and ½ the oregano/basil mix
  4. Put garlic in between with caraway
  5. Repeat the bottom on the top.
  6. Pour in oil so every ingredient is submerged.
  7. Put on cover and put in fridge for 3-5 days.

Best pickled hermelin – The best pickled hermelin you’ve ever eaten. I have a recipe from the scout camp at Franco’s Ironworks. – 25 min prep time – https://recepty.vareni.cz/nejlepsi-nakladany-hermelin/

Ingredients

Preparation process

  1. We spread all hermelines lengthwise. Spread the inside with a lot of red pepper. Mix the garlic and some salt in the dish, mix the mixture with the cream cheese, pepperoni and chopped garlic. Then we overlap the hermelin and squeeze it a little so that it does not break into the glass.
  2. A suitable container in which the hermelins will be ripened will be filled with about a quarter of the oil and add part of the spices, chopped onions and hot peppers. Put 2 – 3 hermelins in the pot, add oil and add some spices, peppers and onions. This is repeated until all the hermelins are dipped in oil together with the other ingredients. We shake the filled glass well enough to allow excess air to evaporate, and spice mixed with oil.
  3. Place the hermelines in a dark room with room temperature. Once a day, shake and save it again. Let them ripen for about 2 weeks but no longer than 6. After two weeks we can taste if they are ripe, store them in the refrigerator.
  4. I recommend the best pickled hermelin with fresh bread and chilled beer.
  5. Tip: Any fungal cheese can be loaded in this way.

Great pickled hermelin – https://recepty.vareni.cz/vyborny-nakladany-hermelin/ – Recipe for excellent homemade pickled hermelin, which will be guaranteed success. – 25 min

Ingredients

Preparation process

  1. Mix the crushed garlic with salt, sweet pepper and chili in a bowl. We’ll leave three cloves of garlic in the whole for later. Spread the hemlings lengthwise and rub them on both sides with a prepared garlic palette. Add a couple of slices of chopped onion to each hermelin. Both halves of hermelin are firmly attached to each other.
  2. Place a little onion on the bottom of the glass (both kinds) and lay the first hermelin on it. Add a few peppers, new spices, and another batch of onions. With layering, we continue to the end. Add chili peppers, cloves of garlic and bay leaves along the hermelin.
  3. After filling the glass, pour the hermelins with oil. Even the upper hermelin must be submerged! We close the glass and try to get rid of any air bubbles (gentle blows on the glass). Pour over loaf overnight at room temperature, put it in the fridge in the morning and serve in 5 days.
  4. Excellent pickled hermelin served with bread.

Our Naklady Syr – https://wp.me/p8ngGY-10M – Recipe, process pix.

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Page Created 12/27/17 & published 1/3/18 (C)M. Bartlett
Last updated 1/4/18