I love, love, love pickles and preserved foods. I do everything from cure my own olives to pickle fish, but the recipes here are standard — more or less — vegetable and fruit pickles. I often find myself with more of a wild edible food or a garden veggie than I can eat fresh, so I immediately think “how can I pickle some of this?” There’s usually a way.
If you can’t find what you are looking for on this page, try my friend Sean’s site, Punk Domestics. He has lots of pickle recipes contributed from the blogosphere.
CONDIMENTS
Fennel Sauerkraut
A truly excellent rendition of sauerkraut that’s about 50-50 shaved fennel bulb and cabbage, spiced with lots of different seeds. Awesome on a sausage.
How to Make Mustard
Basics on mustard-making and a recipe for a simple country mustard.
Ancient Roman Mustard
A modernized version of an ancient Roman mustard. You gotta try this one!
How to Make Beer Vinegar
Yep. Vinegar, made with beer. Not exactly malt vinegar, this is something better, something richer in flavor.
Tabasco Style Fermented Hot Sauce
This is the real deal, a long-fermented hot sauce in the style of Tabasco. It takes a while to make, but it’s worth the wait.
Wild Green Onion Kimchi
I make this with Western three-cornered leeks, but you can use ramps or any other green onion or scallion.
Pickled Blueberries
Yes, you can pickle blueberries, or any small berry, for that matter. They’re fantastic alongside wild game or salmon.
Classic Walnut Ketchup
Yep. Ketchup isn’t just for tomatoes. This is an old English recipe for a sauce that is a lot like a cross between A1 Steak Sauce and Worcestershire. You make it with green, unripe walnuts.
How to Make Verjus
Verjus or verjuice is a “vinegar” made by pressing unripe grapes. Its less acidic than actual vinegar, and is what you will want to use when you want a bright flavor with food served with wine.
ROOTS and BULBS
Preserved Garlic
Not pickled garlic but, caramelized, sweet garlic cloves pressure-canned. This is one of the most amazing foods I’ve ever made.
Pickled Ramps
Beautiful, crunchy and slightly sweet, I pickle these ramp bulbs with saffron, honey and thyme.
Brine Pickled Carrots
Yep. Old style, no-vinegar pickles, fermented in brine. I pickle carrots in no other way now.
Pickled Sunchokes
Also called sunchokes, these crunchy tubers are awesome pickled with turmeric and chiles.
FRUITS
Pickled or Preserved Lemons
Salting citrus such as lemons, limes or oranges has been done in many cultures. Here is an overview of the different methods, with a recipe.
OTHER VEGETABLES
Pickled Artichokes
This is by far the best method for preserving artichoke hearts. Works best with the little artichokes.
Pickled Fiddleheads
Brine-pickled fiddleheads from either ostrich or lady ferns. These are briny and a little spicy, but super crunchy. Eat them alongside cheese or cured meats.
Pickled Mustard Greens
I make these every year when our wild mustard greens come ready. It’s a little like kimchi meets sauerkraut, and it’s a common ingredient in Chinese cooking – also good on a bun with sausage.
Pickled Cauliflower
Classic Italian antipasto style pickled cauliflower. If you grew up in “red sauce” places, you’ll love this one.
Smoked, Roasted and Preserved Jalapenos
These are made of awesome. They are the love child of chipotle and fire-roasted red peppers. You want to make these, oh yes you do…
Pickled Fennel Agrodolce
Sweet and sour fennel pickles, with a little lemon zest thrown in. Wonderful on an antipasto plate.
Preserving Peppers
An old Italian method for preserving sweet or hot peppers. You roast them, dredge in vinegar, salt and preserve in olive oil.
Sicilian Preserved Zucchini
Similar to the pepper recipe above, this is a great way to preserve zucchini. Salted, dried and preserved in oil.
MEATS AND FISH
Pickled Pike
A Northwoods favorite, this works with any firm, white fish.
Swedish Pickled Herring
This is a classic Swedish recipe for herring that can also be made with capelin, sardines, pilchards or smelt.
Pickled Shrimp
A Southern tradition, pickled shrimp is a great party appetizer anytime of the year, but especially in summer.
How to Make Dried Shrimp
Dried shrimp is a key ingredient in many of the world’s cuisines. Here’s how to make them.
MUSHROOMS
Pickled Chanterelle Mushrooms
This is my standard pickle for mushrooms. Slight sweetness, lots of mustard seed and bay leaves. Works with most mushrooms.
Italian Marinated Mushrooms
Absolutely my favorite way to preserve big, meaty mushrooms. I like porcini preserved this way better than ever fresh porcini!
Polish Fermented Mushrooms
A Polish and Eastern European method of preserving mushrooms, these are boiled briefly, then salted down and fermented. Spectacular with bread and vodka.
OLIVES
How to Cure Green Olives
The most basic methods, with water and with brine. Water curing takes vigilance, brine curing takes time.
Curing Olives with Lye
My favorite way to cure green olives. It sounds gnarly, but lye-curing dates back 2000 years. It makes a buttery olive.
How to Make Oil Cured Black Olives
This is that Greek style wrinkly olive. It is a very easy method of curing black olives, and the flavor is far better than any store-bought olive.
MISCELLANEOUS
Salt Cured Egg Yolk
Yes, you can salt cure an egg yolk. It’s an easy preservation project to do, and the finished product is awesome over pasta, rice or vegetables. It’s like eggy parmesan cheese.
Fireweed Tea
A tea made by fermenting fireweed leaves, exactly the way you make traditional black tea.
Candied Angelica
Angelica, lovage or fennel stems are hollow, so when you candy them, they make great straws, or zippy notes as a dessert garnish.
Pickled Walnuts
Pickled walnuts are a classic British condiment, mostly served with cheddar cheese and charcuterie. They also go well with sweet foods, too. You make them with unripe, green walnuts.
Pickled Grape Leaves
I use these grape leaves to make dolmades, stuffed grape leaves. They will last more than a year if you can them.
Tomatillo Salsa
Tomatillo and cilantro salsa. This is a cooked, canned salsa that makes a perfect base for making chile verde.
Madrone is a flavorful tree bark in the West, which creates this pretty stain on the cracked eggs. You can also use ponderosa pine or hickory bark to make these. Madrone Tea Eggs
Thank you for sharing your great recipes. I love pickled everything – especially my traditional cabbage kimchi or radish kimchi. I have already processed some grape leaves from a huge vine which produced a lot of leaves but no grapes its first year. I am looking forward to adding many of your other recipes as the gardn kicks in. Thanks again!
Wonderful recipes, do you have a canning book??
Donna: No I do not. These are my recipes as of now.
I used the vinegar dredged peppers recipe last year for red peppers and came back to find it again this year because it was so good. I’m going to try it this year with my abundance of green peppers since because the mid-summer heat here in NC is preventing my peppers from turning red.
I just ran across your site and I’m excited to try so many of your recipes, especially the preserving and pickling! I already tried the garlic and I can’t get enough of it! I’m moving on to beer vinegar, but I don’t have any vinegar mother, per se, and alas it’s not fruit fly season here in Maine. I do have some store bought unfiltered unpasteurized apple cider vinegar “with the mother” as it states on the bottle. Would this work, and if so, how much would you recommend using?
Michael: I’d use a good amount, like 5:1 beer to Bragg’s, which is what I am betting you have. It’ll still be beery.
Thank you! What a great & much appreciated site. I have a modest 6 acres, here in Ohi & it’s chock full of black walnut trees. I don’t maintain them, I just let them go, as they have on the homestead for over 50 years now… and now I have yet another recipe for them!
How about adding watermelon pickles?
Great blog! I grew up here in the valley reading Euall Gibbons. While other kids were playing games, then going to dances, I was exploreing wild areas along the San Joaquin River,discovering useful Edina or medicinal plants, or finding old abandoned homesites and all the old roses, lilacs, fruit trees,abmnd plant bulbs as well as edibles. And I LOVE food, aall aspects. Have you read any Elizabeth David,Dianna Kennedy,or Paula Wolfert? My favorites. My name is Kris and. I live here in Carmicheal. Wish you the very best!
Hi Hank,
I just found your site today and have been enjoying your articles and perspective. Thank you for your efforts and insights.
I’ve had a food querry that has been bugging me for some time and I figure you might be a good person to run it by. It has to do with avocados, specificaly what to do with avocados that aren’t ripe.
For most produce we have a means of converting into forms for long term, shelf-stable use. An example that comes to mind is grapes – stuck with extra grapes… okay great let’s make wine, vinegar, jam, raisins, etc. But then we have avocados, a fruit that I (and lets admit it, most) truly love, but is only consumed in its ripe form. Or as an oil.
I can’t help but imagine avocados, with their taste and nutional value, being venerated and central to the diet of some long-forgotten central american society. Certainly they must have unlocked the secrets avocados into different forms besides eating ripe?
The internet has thus far only answered back to freeze avocados, but that doesn’t feel totally satisfying. Have you perserved avocados? Any thoughts on how to tackle this?
Thanks,
Austin
Austin: Nope, never preserved avocados. Sorry.
This page is a revelation! Thank you. I’m looking forward to exploring some of these recipes, and really appreciate your clarity and precision.
Hi
Whole salted duck eggs are delicious eaten with rice congee, fried japanese anchovies and a sprinkle of chopped scallions.
I’ve even tried salting chicken eggs – yummy. Sometimes I add just the salted egg white to a vegetable soup while the salted yolks are used for making fried squid coated with salted egg sauce.
I discovered you site today. Tq for the loads of new info and recipes too.
Hank, I just found your blog after (many, many, many clicks after…) googling a pickled cauliflower recipe. I used your recipe and my giardiniera is made and cooling in the fridge, (with the obligatory jar of cucumber slices and spears I was forced to pickle because I made more brine than I needed) but I digress. I was thrilled to find your posts about brining and curing olives. I enjoyed reading your posts and then pinned them onto Pinterest so I can timidly pursue olive preservation this year. I think I’ve pickled almost everything. I can make jam out of whatever grows. Let me in your kitchen and I’ll have dinner ready in an hour. But, olives…they scare me.
We just moved to Ripon (near Modesto) and the property we rented has five prolific olive trees. I can’t stand wasting anything so I’ve been feeling twitchy about preparing to deal with all the olives growing on these five old trees. I know that they’re old. I know that they make great shade. I’ve watched some videos and read some material about identifying the variety of olive. I got nothin.
You mentioned that you go out and pick olives. Ripon is just over an hour south of Sacramento. If you’d like to have a pile of these olives, we’d love to invite you to come pick here! I might even know what type they are by the time I hear from you. I can provide photos of the trees, foliage, and fruit and maybe you’ll know by looking at them. I don’t know when they need to be picked for table fruit, but I suspect that’s coming soon.
I’ll enjoy reading the rest of your posts. I just sent your crayfish post to one of the boys at my son’s school because he is an avid fisherman who just started building his own traps. He’s gonna love your blog. Keep writing; you’re really good. Let me know if you’d like some free olives!
Kimberly 🙂
PS. How lucky are YOU that your partner happens to be an astonishing photographer. Her work is stunning.