Category: cider vinegar

Bread & Butter Refrigerator Pickles

Perfectly sweet and delightfully crisp, these quick bread & butter refrigerator pickles are leaps and bounds better than anything you can buy in the store, with the added benefit of being completely customizable to your personal tastes and preferences. Refrigerator pickles are undeniably the easiest kind of pickles no make, no fancy equipment or complicated […]

The post Bread & Butter Refrigerator Pickles first appeared on Love and Olive Oil.

Perfectly sweet and delightfully crisp, these quick bread & butter refrigerator pickles are leaps and bounds better than anything you can buy in the store, with the added benefit of being completely customizable to your personal tastes and preferences.

Refrigerator pickles are undeniably the easiest kind of pickles no make, no fancy equipment or complicated water baths necessary. They come together in minutes, and keep beautifully in the fridge for weeks, and result in beautifully crispy pickles.

Three uncovered jars of Bread & Butter Refrigerator Pickles in brine, with two kirby cucumbers on the side

The two main kinds of pickles commercially available are kosher dill and bread & butter. Dill pickles obviously have a dill-forward flavor, and are less sweet and more vinegary overall.

Bread and butter pickles, on the other hand, have more sugar and a different combination of spices and seasonings (primarily onion, mustard, and celery seed), resulting in a vastly different flavor profile.

I have yet to find any definitive information on the origins of the name; it seems to be somewhat of a mystery, though many sources claim the name is derived from a common depression-area sandwich featuring pickled cucumbers layered between slices of buttered bread.

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Quick Pickled Red Onions

Tart, tangy, and fantastically fuchsia, these pickled red onions are quick and easy and stored in the fridge, no canning required! Pickled red onions are the perfect garnish for just about anything, from tacos to burgers to grilled chicken and more. They add bright flavor and a kick of acid to any dish they embellish. […]

The post Quick Pickled Red Onions first appeared on Love and Olive Oil.

Tart, tangy, and fantastically fuchsia, these pickled red onions are quick and easy and stored in the fridge, no canning required!

Pickled red onions are the perfect garnish for just about anything, from tacos to burgers to grilled chicken and more. They add bright flavor and a kick of acid to any dish they embellish.

Two jars of pickled red onions in glass jars on a marble background

Technically, I’ve posted quick pickled red onion recipes before, but always as a part of another recipe (like these pulled pork tacos or these loaded nachos).

But the thing is, this recipe is so easy and so versatile, it really deserves a post of its own.

Two lidded glass mason jars filled with Quick Pickled Red Onions

This is a very basic recipe, with little more than salt, sugar, peppercorns and vinegar.

Consider this a foundation for flavor, if you will. It’s perfect as is, but if you’re feeling frisky can mix it up with some fresh garlic cloves, maybe a sliced red chili or pepper flakes for a bit of spice, mustard seeds or some fresh herbs, even. Or maybe add a spoonful of gochujang for a kimchi-like twist.

You can also mix and match vinegars here. I like to use half white vinegar and half cider vinegar, but red wine vinegar would be lovely as would a little bit of champagne, rice vinegar or even a small splash of balsamic (though you would muddy the gorgeous garnet hue of the onions with that last one.)

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Sweet & Spicy Pepper Jelly

Pepper jelly is a delicious enigma: the perfect balance of sweetness and spice. It is nothing short of perfection on a cracker with cream cheese. This recipe is extremely versatile, use whatever color peppers you have on hand, and adjust the heat level to your liking, from just a hint of heat to inferno-in-your-mouth. This […]

Pepper jelly is a delicious enigma: the perfect balance of sweetness and spice. It is nothing short of perfection on a cracker with cream cheese.

This recipe is extremely versatile, use whatever color peppers you have on hand, and adjust the heat level to your liking, from just a hint of heat to inferno-in-your-mouth.

Jars of red and orange pepper jelly with printable labels

This sweet and spicy pepper jelly is one of my favorite recipes from my canning ebook series, That’s My Jam. It’s been a few years since I’ve made it, but recently a glut of peppers from our CSA left me no other choice than to make a batch or two. The result was so pretty I decided to share it here, complete with brand new labels (the ones in the ebook are specifically for red pepper jelly, so a new, more color-versatile label seemed to be in order).

I’m actually not particularly fond of peppers, if you can believe it. Pepper jelly is the exception, however, and I will devour an entire jar myself with gusto.

Bright sunlight making the red and orange pepper jelly sparkle

I’ve actually posted a pepper jelly recipe before, a traditional recipe using liquid pectin, but I reworked the recipe using Pomona’s pectin for the ebook a few years back. The updated recipe also incorporates the chopped peppers rather than straining them out, which results in a slightly chunkier but noticeably more flavorful jam (not to mention a higher yield).

Another benefit to using a low sugar pectin? It’s much quicker. In fact, the third batch of this jelly I made (I had high hopes for the purple version using some pretty purple sweet peppers, alas, ’twas not meant to be…) only took 30 minutes start to finish, minus the water bath (which I opted to skip for the third batch since it was smaller and ugly and not worth preserving). Even including the 10 minute boiling water bath, you can easily be done in 45 minutes… an hour total if we’re including dishes. Still, for jam, that’s definitely on the quick side, and one of the reasons I love canning with Pomona’s pectin.

(Be sure to click through and scroll to the bottom of this post for the printable labels… including a NEW editable template option for your canning convenience!)

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Cranberry Chutney

Have you ever gone away for a few weeks and found out that you’d left the freezer door ajar? Well, I did. And let me tell you, it wasn’t pretty. Before traveling, since I’m anti-gaspillage (against food waste), I jammed whatever I could into my already-stuffed freezer, including a half-eaten tomato tart, which I thought would be nice to have ready-and-waiting upon my arrival home,…

Have you ever gone away for a few weeks and found out that you’d left the freezer door ajar? Well, I did. And let me tell you, it wasn’t pretty.

Before traveling, since I’m anti-gaspillage (against food waste), I jammed whatever I could into my already-stuffed freezer, including a half-eaten tomato tart, which I thought would be nice to have ready-and-waiting upon my arrival home, partially-used blocks of butter, and the miscellaneous leftover ends of bread that one collects when one constantly buys too much bread. When I returned, I realized that one of those bread pieces had been caught in the door and kept it from sealing closed.

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Cucamelon Pickles

Cucamelons are adorable little fruits that taste like a cucumber and look like a tiny watermelon. This quick refrigerator pickle recipe treats them more like the later: with a hint of ginger, allspice and star anise that makes for a truly unique pickle. I stumbled upon these cucamelons a few weeks ago at the farmers […]

Cucamelons are adorable little fruits that taste like a cucumber and look like a tiny watermelon. This quick refrigerator pickle recipe treats them more like the later: with a hint of ginger, allspice and star anise that makes for a truly unique pickle.

I stumbled upon these cucamelons a few weeks ago at the farmers market, and they were simply too cute to pass up.

Handmade ceramic dish overflowing with tiny cucamelons.

Cucamelons, also called mouse melons (OMG) or Mexican sour gherkins, are tiny, cucumber-like fruits native to Mexico and central America. With a thick outer skin with a watermelon-like appearance, it’s obvious where they get their name (I also think they look a bit like dinosaur eggs).

The flavor is tart, like a sour, lemony cucumber. The skins are thicker than your typical cucumbers, more snappy not unlike a watermelon.

I bought a quart of them, without the faintest idea of what I was going to do with them, but pickles seemed like an obvious choice.

Pouring the cider vinegar-based brine into a jar packed with cucamelons.

Considering they have characteristics of both cucumbers and melons, I figured I could go one of two ways:

Treat the cucamelons like cucumbers and pickle them in my trusty garlic dill pickle brine.

OR

Treat them like melons and pickle them in a more aromatic blend of spices like you’d use for pickled watermelon rind.

In this case, I chose the later (but if you prefer the cucumber direction, my spicy garlic dill pickle brine will work equally well for cucamelons).

The aromatic mix of spices, with a hint of heat and gingery spice makes for a unique flavor experience. Chances are, you’ve never tasted a pickle quite like this one. And their tiny shape means you’ll find yourself popping more than a few in your mouth, one after the other.

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