On Monday I was asked about my pickled peas. So today I'll give the recipe. The recipe works for most veggies including cucumbers. It is not a canning recipe, but a refrigerator pickle recipe. Nothing is cooked. You can heat the vinegar and water to help dissolve the sugar, but it isn't necessary. If you do, make sure it is cool before pouring over your peas. The nice thing about refrigerator pickles is that the vegetables stay very crisp since they are never cooked. They keep fairly well. I typically keep them for about three months, so it is an easy way to preserve if you have the refrigerator space.
There are two parts to the recipe. The pickle juice is the first which is a vinegar solution. You can make as much or as little as you like. If you make extra you can keep it in a glass jar in the fridge until you have something to pickle. Personally I made four times the recipe since I was making three quarts of pickled peas. I might have gotten away with just making three but I'm not sure it would have been quite enough.
Pickle Juice
- 1 T salt
- 3 T sugar
- 1 c vinegar
- 3/4 c water
You can use any vinegar you like. I often use white vinegar because I like the bite. Many people don't. If not use cider vinegar.
The second part of the recipe is the vegetables and spices. Right now the vegetables are snap peas. Later they will be cucumbers or maybe beans. If you notice I have the spices in the jar above. Onions I consider part of the spice, but they could just as easily be the vegetable. For spices you can be simple and just use dill or maybe some pickling spices. I tend to be more complicated. I use onion, garlic, fresh ginger, dill weed, dill seed, mustard seed, peppercorns, coriander, bay leaf, whole allspice, whole cloves (one or two in a jar only as they are very powerful), and cinnamon bark. I used to use chili peppers too. I'd put one or two in the jar. Since I can't eat them anymore, I just leave them out. But the bit of the chili goes very well with pickles.
Pour the liquid over the veggies and let them sit in the fridge for a bit. I try to let them sit for at least three days before eating. But sometimes they just don't make it that long. But with three quarts at least some of them get eaten after they have had a chance to develop a good flavor.
One of the things I like best about refrigerator pickles is that you can make them even if you have harvests just trickling in. You don't need pounds all at once to preserve. You can make up a jar half filled with pickle juice and the spices and as you harvest you can toss in your veggies a few at a time. It is especially good if you like cucumber pickles, but are only harvesting a cucumber a day. You can't really save them up as they would go bad, but you can just toss them in the jar as they come in. Eventually the jar will be filled up and you can start a new one and start eating the filled one. Also it is nice in the summer when it is hot and you just don't want to bring out the canner and heat the house up with steam. They may not keep for years this way, but they do keep for months and the pickles have a much better texture.
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Last year was the first time that I made refrigerator pickles. They are much easier and they taste absolutely wonderful! I wish I had started making them years ago!
ReplyDeleteThanks for the detailed post on making them.
Thank you for posting this - I keep reading about refrigerator pickles but I haven't really known what is meant by them. I use a similar technique for beetroot (except I do cook it) but I haven't thought to adapt it to uncooked produce - now I will.
ReplyDeleteWe don't eat a lot of pickles in this household so this is a very nice way to have only a few around. Thanks for the tutorial.
ReplyDeleteWow!! Cudowny ogrod i cudowne warzywa..Brawo.. Pozdrawiam, Ula
ReplyDeleteOh! thank you!
ReplyDeleteI never did it but I will learn. What else can we put in? may be summer squashes? or kale? Bok choy whites?
Anything, but the greens I'd salt for 24 hours first to get rid of the water. Or the water will just dilute the solution.
DeleteI will have to try this recipe. Thanks for sharing.
ReplyDeleteThe rabbits got most of my small planting of peas, but I might get a handful. but not enough to pickle. What a fascinating idea.
ReplyDeleteI use the same method for my refrigerator pickles. Last year I started using rice vinegar for my pickled peas, it tastes great if you like a more mild tasting vinegar (I'm not particularly fond of white vinegar, too harsh). I like your idea of gradually filling a jar if the veggies are just trickling in. I'm going to try growing cornichon cucumbers this year but don't want to grow a lot so the trickle method will be perfect.
ReplyDeletehmm never thought to pickle pea. I am going to have to try this
ReplyDeleteThat looks good. Too bad I never have nearly enough peas.
ReplyDeleteI've never had a pickled pea before. You definitely use an interesting spice combination.. I think I need to branch out from my Ball pickle recipe!
ReplyDeleteI hadn't heard of refrigerator pickles before but what i great idea,(especially just adding the produce as you pick) I'm keen to have a go but not much in my garden to pickle at present, Beetroot?
ReplyDeletethanks for the informative post.
This is great. I never thought of pickling the snap peas! I've done refrigerator dill pickles and they're wonderful. Trying to find new and tasty ways to use the produce, so this is definitely one to try!
ReplyDeleteI really love refrigerator dill pickles, so I am pretty sure we will be fans of the pickled peas too. I am waiting for my snap peas to start producing but once they do I intend to try this out this year.
ReplyDeleteThank you for this tutorial. I have read your posts with the words "refrigerator pickles" in them many times, but I never knew how to pull it off. I **love** dilled green beans.I bet I could use this recipe for that. I bet I would love sweet peas pickled this way, too. :)
ReplyDeleteThanks so much for the recipe. My dill is starting to head and the peas are just starting to pod up. I have not tried ginger in my pickles. I'll have to give it a try.
ReplyDeleteI had never thought about pickling peas. Maybe next year we'll give it a try. We're making refrigerator pickles regularly now. We may try canning some again if we get enough cucumbers coming in (which we actually might this year!) but for whatever reason, our canned pickles don't come out as good as we want.
ReplyDeleteLike this idea very much, especially since many of my harvests trickle in. I gave up canning years ago
ReplyDelete