#17 - Pickle Something

I love pickles. I love pickled things. Pickling is easy. And cheap.

Why has it taken me so long to pickle my own things?

K Rob used to pickle stuff all the time when we were roommates in San Diego. Mostly onions, of what I remember. And every time, I'd be like, dang, this adds so much to this dish.

So, I finally had my first attempt at pickling.

I started with a search on the Serious Eats website of pickling techniques. I started with the very first recipe on the article called 23 Pickle Recipes We Love: garlic dill pickles. A classic.

The recipe called for 8 ingredients. I came home from the store with 7 of them. Luckily I had bought fresh dill for a sauce for dinner, so I subbed that in for dill seeds. I'm sure that matters, but I wasn't about to walk the full block back to the store. No way. Plus, I see fresh dill in pickle jars all the time. So...

Chop, peel, boil, combine, wait.

Viola.

Pickles.

Before

Then, I decided to give pickled garlic a go as well. The Serious Eats article claimed that I should have been the whole garlic cloves from my pickle jars the whole time and gave me the deepest regrets of my life because WHY HAVEN'T I DONE THAT BEFORE?!

So again, on my own, peel, boil, combine, wait.

.................

Well, I had some mixed results.

The spicy garlic dills? Delightful. Just hot enough to make the sides of my news break out in a little sweat, just like they do with McClure's spicy dills (the best pickles of all time). They had taste and enough crispness. I am so glad I can keep these on hand because a spicy pickle is my favorite cure for rough morning.

After: YES

The regular garlic dills? Nope. They tasted so much of apple cider vinegar and it was not good. However, I may try again with the same recipe with just white vinegar. Something about the acid and flavor of the apple cider vinegar made me put the pickle down, something I've never done with a pickle in my life.

Then, gem of all gems, the pickled garlic. I'm never going to need to worry about vampires again with these little guys. Yes, I ate them whole, just popped the whole clove in my mouth. I mean, not all of them. But I kinda want to eat all of them. They have that garlic bite but then they mellow out quickly and just leave a nice, clean mouth feel with that lingering garlic taste. Plus, they were so easy. I'm going to make these all the time, to snack when I need a little flavor, as a side for cheese plates, and to throw into salad dressings and other items. Yum.

I also bought pears to pickle but haven't quite gotten there yet. I'll add an update when I get to them.