The Pickled Pantry: From Apples to Zucchini, 150 Recipes for Pickles, Relishes, Chutneys & More

441 Pages·2012·4.64 MB·English

by  Andrea Chesman

The Pickled Pantry

THE Pickled Pantry
Andrea Chesman
Illustrations by Lisa Congdon
To Sam, the pickle palate master, whose boundless enthusiasm kept me going
The mission of Storey Publishing is to serve our customers by
publishing practical information that encourages
personal independence in harmony with the environment.
Edited by Margaret Sutherland and Pam Thompson
Art direction and book design by Mary Winkelman Velgos
Text production by Vicky Vaughn Shea/Ponderosa Pine Design
Indexed by Andrea Chesman Illustrations by © Lisa Congdon/Lilla Rogers
Studio Photography by © Addie Holland 17, © David Shankbone/Wikimedia
Commons 245, © John Polak 214, © Rick’s Picks LLC 78, © Robert
Waterhouse 24, © Sebastian Collett 38, © Xan Price 138, © Yvonne Tchida
220, and © Zac Wolf 128
© 2012 by Andrea Chesman
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced without written
permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief
passages or reproduce illustrations in a review with appropriate credits; nor
may any part of this book be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or
transmitted in any form or by any means — electronic, mechanical,
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publisher.
The information in this book is true and complete to the best of our
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Chesman, Andrea.
The pickled pantry / by Andrea Chesman.
p. cm.
Includes index.
ISBN 978-1-60342-562-9 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Pickles. I. Title.
TX805.C437 2012
641.6′162—dc23
2012004608
contents
Introduction
1 All About Pickling
2 Fermented Pickles
3 Single Jar Pickles
4 Big-Harvest Fresh-Pack Pickles
5 Salsas, Relishes, Chutneys
6 Refrigerator & Freezer Pickles
7 Recipes for Enjoying Homemade Pickles
Acknowledgments
Index
Introduction
People come to pickling for so many reasons. Some people are motivated by
sheer love of eating all things sour. Others are practical do-it-yourselfers who
pickle to preserve excess produce or to extend their options for eating local year-
round. Still others are preserving tradition. I came to pickling for a combination
of those reasons.
I made my first batch of pickles a long time ago. I was a recent college
graduate with my first garden, a small patch in a community garden. What a
thrilling experience it was. I put a seed in the ground, and it grew!
Naturally I wanted to pack all that freshly harvested goodness into jars to
preserve it for the coming winter. I asked my grandmother how she made her
pickles. My grandmother was not a woman enthralled by the domestic arts, nor
was she overly chatty. She told me to put cucumbers and dill in a crock, cover
them with water, then add enough salt so “it’s just before you gag.”
Did I mention my grandmother had an indomitable will and a cast-iron
stomach? I followed her instructions to the letter, adding only enough salt so it
was just before I gagged. Within days, I had a slimy, foul-smelling brew.
Apparently, our gag reflexes did not match. It was years before I tried pickling
again.
Many gardens later, I had the opportunity to collect pickle recipes and gather
them together for a book. It began with a “pickle barter party.” Because so many
traditional recipes yielded seven or nine jars of pickles (a boiling-water-bath
canner load), I thought it would be a great idea to swap jars of home-canned
pickles the same way people swap cookies at Christmastime. My friends were all
fellow back-to-the-landers, and preserving food by canning, pickling, and
freezing was part of the lifestyle. Today’s urban food swaps accomplish much
the same thing.
For the book Pickles & Relishes: 150 Recipes from Apples to Zucchini, I
tested hundreds of different types of pickles. Each batch of pickles was tasted
and evaluated by a group of colleagues at Garden Way Publishing (which later
became Storey Publishing, the publisher of this book). Throughout the better
part of a year, I brought a jar of pickles to work each day to be sampled and
evaluated at lunch by pickle aficionados. We called it the “pickle du jour
program.”
What I learned as I tasted my way through batch after batch of pickles is that
preferences vary widely. For some people, no pickle is too sweet; others hate
garlic. But inevitably, there is a perfect pickle for every taste. It just requires
collecting and inventing many, many recipes.
Over the years, I’ve watched many trends in pickle making. In the 1970s,
many people rediscovered pickle making as they moved “back to the land” and
reclaimed many traditional skills: home brewing, wool spinning, bread baking,
and, of course, pickle making.
Then came the health food years, when many people, including myself,
worried about salt and sugar in pickles. I had a few “no salt” pickle recipes in
my first book that I don’t think about revisiting. Interest in making pickles
waned as the global supermarket enticed Americans to eat fresh foods regardless
of the season. In the 1980s, few saw the need to preserve food as long as the
supermarket was able to supply fresh vegetables year-round. A couple of times I
was asked to teach a pickling course, but the courses failed to attract many
students.
A lot of pickling knowledge wasn’t so much lost as it was buried, skipping a
generation or two.
Recently a perfect storm of food safety scares plus an economic downturn has
led many people to reconsider gardening and preserving. A desire to eat local
foods in season and reduce the carbon footprint of the food we eat has made
pickle making particularly attractive. As people have delved into local foods, a
whole artisanal food movement around fermented foods — making wine,
cheese, beer, and lacto-fermented vegetables and fruit (i.e., pickles) — has
evolved. Some pickle devotees are attracted to claims regarding the health
benefits of fermented foods, while others are enthusiastic about reviving
traditional foodways. And, of course, pickles taste good!
Pickles are foods preserved with either salt or vinegar. Both the salt and
vinegar act to inhibit the growth of spoilage bacteria. Pickles may contain
enough acid to keep well in a refrigerator without heat processing, or they may