If you’ve ever bought a jar of boutique-y, farmers’ market pickles, you know they can cost an arm and a leg. It’s quite the racket — the ingredients required are very inexpensive, and making pickles is hardly rocket science. In fact, you don’t even have to bother with canning them, providing you’ll be eating your pickles within a month or so.
Refrigerator pickles are stupid-easy to make, and entirely worth the minimal effort. It’s fun to play around with different pickling spices, customizing to your heart’s content. For my pickled green beans and carrots, I created two distinctive spice blends. The carrots are spiked with cumin, while the green beans are aromatic with caraway and dill seeds. Crisp and tangy, they’re the perfect garnish for a bloody mary or a glass of ice cold tomato juice.
Pickled Carrots and Green Beans
1/2 lb. green beans, trimmed
6 nantes carrots, peeled and quartered
For the carrots:
1/4 tsp. brown mustard seeds
1/4 tsp. yellow mustard seeds
1/4 tsp. crushed red pepper
1/4 tsp. cumin seeds
1/4 tsp. black peppercorns
1/4 tsp. kosher salt
For the green beans:
1/4 tsp. brown mustard seeds
1/4 tsp. yellow mustard seeds
1/4 tsp. crushed red pepper
1/4 tsp. caraway seeds
1/4 tsp. dill seeds
1/4 tsp. black peppercorns
1/4 tsp. kosher salt
1 C. apple cider vinegar
1C. water
1. Pack the green beans and carrots into two pint jars. Add the proper spices to each jar, referring to the separate ingredient lists above.
2. In a small (1-quart) sauce pan, bring the vinegar and water to a boil. Turn off heat.
3. Fill the jars with the vinegar and water mixture while still boiling hot — do this over the sink to avoid a mess.
4. Put lids on the jars, and let cool. Place in refrigerator and let pickle for at least five days before eating. Best after two weeks.
Hey Coco,
Beautiful blog! I’ve been following (and meaning to comment) for weeks now. LOVE the pickled beans and carrot recipe. I have a quick question: Have you ever made zucchini pickles? I have a ridiculous amount of zucchini I need to use up and I’m entertaining the idea of pickling them, but I’m afraid they’ll get too mushy… any ideas?
Thanks!
Ah, the perennial zucchini problem. I’ve seen a handful of bread and butter zucchini pickle recipes, but have never tried it myself. I just can’t imagine them turning out anything but mushy! As you probably already know, zucchini is good in quick breads, muffins, thrown into pasta sauces, grilled and diced into a summer salad or salsa, sliced and layered in a gratin . . . but I just dunno about the pickles. If you do make a batch, please let me know how they turn out!
Hey Coco! It’s Sara C. from school–I LOVE this blog. It all looks so delicious. Also I like it when you make the joke. When you write them down, there’s less chance of missing one. I wanted to post on this particular entry because I was looking around the web for what the heck to do with some green peppers (which I hate) and found this website, which has a lot of ads on it, but also mentions some zucchini pickling–well, actually it mentions zucchini as an alternative option for what to pickle, but I still thought that, yeah, um, I’d tell you, cuz, um, look how exciting. Here’s the page:
http://www.herbcompanion.com/cooking/4-recipes-for-quick-pickles-rosemary-and-sage-quick-pickles.aspx
I’m not sure what this website is but it sounds like your style.
ANYWAY, I tried the refrigerator carrot pickles but am waiting to open them. It’s been a week. Three…more…days, Sara. Three…more…days.
Yeah. Thanks so much!
B’aww, thanks for commenting, Sara. Those pickles get better the longer you leave ’em, but it can be maddening to wait!
I have made bread and butter zucchini pickles but it has been over 20 years ago. I liked them very much but I remarried a man who had OCD and freaked out about the whole canning jars in the basement thing…lol I gave away a whole wall of canned goods…I hated that. Anyway they were really good. I forgot about them. I didn’t have a good crop this year…I know whats with that but anyway I need to do that next year….Hubby has decided homemade is the way to go…
My mother always made marrow jam to use up those leftover zucchinis
http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/7565/marrow-and-ginger-jam