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Post by tod2 on Jan 17, 2022 13:27:21 GMT
I wish you were closer....I have a ton of bottles waiting to be filled!
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Post by onlyMark on Jan 17, 2022 13:38:31 GMT
I end up grabbing whatever bottles I've got. As can be seen. I still had some cabbage left over an no bottles left. I'll nip round to your place and borrow a couple.
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Post by bixaorellana on Jan 17, 2022 17:42:27 GMT
Oooo ~ those pickles look wonderful. Can regular green cabbage be substituted?
I have lots of jars, but need your recipe!
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Post by kerouac2 on Jan 17, 2022 18:26:04 GMT
I bought fresh pickled vegetables at the Chinese supermarket a couple of days ago. It consists of carrot slices, white radish, cucumber, red capiscum and chilli. Brine, vinegar, sugar and nuoc mam (fish sauce to some of you) are the other ingredients.
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Post by onlyMark on Jan 17, 2022 20:30:27 GMT
Bixa, bear in mind none of my pickles stay around more than a few weeks so how they are long term I don't know. I think they'd be ok a year or more with the proper sealed jars but I don't have those as I eat them soon enough. A lot of recipes seem to call for vinegar with water at a ratio of maybe half/half. I've never done that because vinegar has always been cheap - apart from getting the malted vinegar mentioned in previous posts. So now I just use apple cider vinegar. It's about seventy cents a litre (Euro). This is exactly what I have in my larder - I keep to the simplest I can do now and it still taste good - so I fill whatever jars with whatever I'm pickling, usually onion and red cabbage, though I see no reason why green cabbage can't be used - pack the cabbage down quite well - then fill the jars up with the vinegar. Then I pour out the vinegar into a saucepan plus a little extra. I fill the jars up with vinegar before doing anything with it so I know how much I need so as not to do too much or too little. For every litre of vinegar my personal taste is to add about a full tablespoon of sugar into the saucepan, add ground pepper, garlic flakes and a few chilli flakes. Bring it to the boil and simmer for a minute or two. Pour it straight in to the jars with the vegetable in - I usually line them up and pour each jar about half full - it's difficult to get an even spread of the chilli/garlic/pepper - then go back again pouring until three quarters full and then the last time filling them all up to the top. Put the tops on tight and then turn them upside down. I can then check if the jar is leaking but also the top of the veg in the jar becomes the bottom to make sure it's got some pickling juice on it for a while. Leave them to just about cool and then turn them back up the right way. Every week I turn them around again for a week. Don't really know why or if there is any benefit, it just seemed a good idea.
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Post by kerouac2 on Jan 17, 2022 20:55:24 GMT
Well, that's what they do for champagne, and that seems to work.
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Post by bixaorellana on Jan 17, 2022 21:13:21 GMT
I am fascinated by the simplicity of your method, Mark. A question re: half vinegar/half water ~ your pickles must come out quite sour, correct? Also, you don't use any salt. Maybe some pickling methods cut the vinegar with water, then add salt so that the solution is more of a brine? At any rate, the sugar is a good preservative, too. Based on your jar turning technique, I'm assuming that no refrigeration is needed. Thanks for this! For the record, this is the cider vinegar I use. It's a brand I trust, plus is really apple cider vinegar -- no caramel color or anything like that added. It's @one usd for this amount:
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Post by kerouac2 on Jan 17, 2022 21:30:29 GMT
That should work.
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Post by onlyMark on Jan 18, 2022 6:58:43 GMT
I don't use any salt as a personal preference. I try to use as little as possible for my high blood pressure reasons. The sugar cuts the sourness but there's not a lot of it and I do like them sour and not with a brine taste. I think the vinegar preserves them enough without any help from the sugar. Quite what the precise reason is for water I don't know. For cost reasons? Chemical reasons? The vinegar itself contains quite a lot of water anyway surely. My all time favourite vinegar is Sarson's Malt vinegar. I looked at how they make pickled onions on their website. Saw the recipe had no water but did have salt and sugar. So I cut out the salt and cut down the sugar content as I experimented with it to my taste. So never used water - www.sarsons.co.uk/recipes/pickled-onionsThen I looked how they made pickled shallots. No extra water. But their pickling vinegar which is ok getting in the UK but nowhere else, so I used apple cider vinegar - www.sarsons.co.uk/recipes/pickled-shallots-chilli-bayFridge stored pickled cucumber. No water - www.sarsons.co.uk/recipes/pickled-cucumberMy favourite, pickled red cabbage. Dead simple, no water - www.sarsons.co.uk/recipes/pickled-red-cabbageTheir pickling vinegar is little different to their normal malt vinegar apart from some added spices, so I thought I'll just add my own spices and try with cheap apple cider vinegar to see if it's acceptable. Their recipes generally say to salt the vegetable and leave overnight - tried that, didn't find much of a difference. Yes, some water came out but if some recipes say to use 50:50 or so water anyway, what harm can it do to not salt them, especially when you rinse it all off before pickling. I can't be bothered to wait for that. They also heat the vinegar with the spices either just until the sugar melts or boil it, but in either case, leave it to cool. Their fridge cucumber adds it cold. I want my cabbage to be slightly soft, just slightly, same with the onions, just a hint of not biting into a raw onion consistency, so I boil the vinegar with the spices and just add it then and seal it. In the back of my mind I had the thought that for canning or pickling you seal it when it is hot, so I never looked if that as right or not, but just started doing it. Sealing the jar and turning upside down just seemed a good idea. No real idea of the benefits other than instantly seeing if the seal is good - especially as if it isn't, you wouldn't know about it until the contents eventually go off sooner than the proper sealed stuff. I'm obviously no expert, just as with a lot of things we do, we just keep trying until it appears to work for you with whatever you can get. I don't refrigerate my pickles other than what I do as shown on post number 165. I do keep them in a cool place though as expected. That vinegar you have is more or less what I use in Spain, same type of stuff and good.
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Post by mickthecactus on Jan 18, 2022 8:56:04 GMT
That’s very interesting Mark. Thanks.
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Post by onlyMark on Jan 18, 2022 10:36:43 GMT
I like pickles but don't like being in a pickle.
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Post by bixaorellana on Jan 18, 2022 15:27:00 GMT
Thanks so much, Mark! Your experiments & the logic behind them answer questions I've had about pickling in general, plus make me more likely to tackle it in the future.
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Post by onlyMark on Jan 18, 2022 15:41:19 GMT
In a nutshell, add spiced boiling vinegar and put the top on. If I could have made it even more simple for myself I would have done. Not sure if that works for all vegetables though, especially the softer ones like Bell peppers.
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Post by bixaorellana on Jan 18, 2022 16:18:49 GMT
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Post by kerouac2 on Jan 18, 2022 17:08:10 GMT
I think the people who support pepper rings and the ones who support pepper strips should be outfitted with boxing gloves so they can duke it out.
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Post by onlyMark on Jan 18, 2022 18:32:46 GMT
Bixa, the first link here Mouta commented - sounds reasonable what she said. I'd go for that. the assumption is the contents will last far longer then, which I always think mine will anyway. The recipe does that step where they put the jalapeños in the boiled mixture and leave to to cool, then transfer the jalapeños to the jars, then add the fluid. Can't see the point myself, just pack them in jars and add the boiling liquid. Also the half/half split of vinegar and water, like the other two - but I wonder is that just to ease the strong taste of the vinegar and/or reducing the keeping time to a couple of months at most because of the amount of water.
Second link - same kind of thing and yes, I'd agree that there is the risk of the jalapeños being too soft. I also see a couple at least of comments saying they do it my way with just adding the liquid to the stuff already in the jars.
Third, Chef John - again another mention of packing them in with tongs, are they all copying each other? As with the others, half/half ratio liquid and adding sugar to cut down the heat. My usual cabbage and onions don't have heat, so why should I add a lot of sugar, enough to take away a little of the vinegar tartness but I'll do what I do I think. Thanks for those though and I'll see about following that if I do something softer like cucumber.
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Post by bixaorellana on Jan 18, 2022 19:21:01 GMT
The reason for using the tongs is to make a mess, as far as I can see.
Although it could be to try to get @the equal amount of product into each jar before adding the liquid.
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Post by onlyMark on Jan 18, 2022 21:11:24 GMT
Don't have tongs. I'd have to use a spoon. I hope they wouldn't mind.
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Post by bixaorellana on Jan 18, 2022 21:21:16 GMT
Thirty some-odd years ago I was going into a Wal-Mart which had tons of stuff out front at rock-bottom prices. One of them was this odd little item. It cost a dime and looked useful. It's one of the best things I ever bought & I'm using it to this very day. The correct name is canning funnel ~
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Post by lugg on Jan 19, 2022 19:31:16 GMT
I feel slightly embarrassed ( or maybe smug?) to say that I have successfully (so far) pickled my glut of chillis from the Summer. I read how to do it and just could not be bothered with the faff - sterlisation , blah ,blah new spices and vinegar etc . I just tipped the chillis into the pickling liquid left over from a couple of jars of jalapenos - topped up the vinegar and added a few peppercorns, swished it all around in the jars and stored in the fridge. So far they have been fine.
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Post by bixaorellana on Jan 19, 2022 19:51:37 GMT
That should work!
Did you parboil the chiles?
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Post by bixaorellana on Feb 11, 2022 21:30:27 GMT
Ziplock Japanese pickles!
This is only the second video I've watched by this guy, and I'm pretty impressed by how simple & tempting his recipes are. Note that there is an ingredient list at the end of the video ~
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Post by kerouac2 on Feb 12, 2022 17:32:17 GMT
Those recipes are really clever and simple. I don't think I would use as much salt.
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Post by tod2 on Feb 14, 2022 12:52:44 GMT
What a super simple pickle method! I have a cabbage just waiting to be abused!
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Post by kerouac2 on Jun 22, 2022 5:56:27 GMT
I have launched my own pickling experiment with white radish and carrot.
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Post by onlyMark on Jul 20, 2023 16:04:06 GMT
I'm at the house in Spain for nearly three weeks by myself. I've started building up my store of pickles. some made, Some bought. I've yet to do carrots and normal onion. Got some cheese to go with them. Mixed pickles on the left then back row is pickled onions and pickled cabbage. Branston Pickle in the middle and beetroot and cucumber at the front. The cheese is Wensleydale and Lancashire. It will all go well together.
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Post by mickthecactus on Jul 20, 2023 17:11:08 GMT
That looks perfect!
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Post by onlyMark on Jul 20, 2023 20:27:42 GMT
Had some tonight with a Cornish pasty. Really enjoyed it.
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Post by bixaorellana on Jul 20, 2023 22:03:05 GMT
I'll be right over!
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Post by onlyMark on Jul 21, 2023 7:00:08 GMT
You better be quick. They're going rapidly.
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