Pickles

Judging by the camera roll on my phone (or the absence thereof—I had a phone for about 13 months that died right outside of the warrantee, so it happened then), I first made pickles in July of 2017.

Living in Bushwick during a wildly rainy summer, I bought some enticingly blue canning jars and conventional produce on a whim. I was far from my favorite parts of Brooklyn, and wanted something to keep me busy and cheer me up. The idea of pickling (and canning, generally) was so intimidating. What if I do it wrong, what if I get sick, what if I make someone else sick, why are hobbies so cost-prohibitive? So I tried making refrigerator pickles. Quick and safe, they didn’t require tools beyond what I already had to make.

Since then, I’ve been making pickles every summer. Often they’re classic dill, and occasionally I chop up different combinations of vegetables to add to the dill brine. Speaking of dill, I still have plenty if you are in need. But I also make bread-and-butter pickles, pickled onions, and pickled beets. My most recent batch of pickles were these some golden beets I picked up at the farmers market last week that I didn’t feel like roasting. Boil beets for 20–30 minutes, run under cold water until you can push the skin off, slice into smaller pieces, and add to jars—voila, pickled beets in less time than it would take to peel and roast.

My typical brine formula is 1 cup apple cider vinegar boiled together with 1 cup of water and one tablespoon of kosher salt, with 1 or 2 tablespoons of pickling spice and 10 cloves of garlic divided between two or three pint jars. That’s along with the veggies and however much dill I can fit in the spaces between cucumbers. Then I let it cool on the counter for a few hours, and leave in the fridge for a couple of days before opening.

If I want to add sugar, like with these bread-and-butter zucchini pickles, I usually look up what various recipes say online, and halve it. For onions and beets, I often leave out the pickling spice and add whole cloves or cinnamon sticks with peppercorns, depending on the flavor profile I want.

Once, I bothered canning some golden beets, but ate all the jars in less than a month, so those I always make refrigerator pickle style, too. Pickling as a process has become almost muscle memory now, so I don’t mind making them once every month or summer during the summer. Pickles aren’t usually something I crave during the winter, anyhow, and it’s such an exhilarating feeling when produce I pickle starts showing up at the farmers market in late spring. Plus, I don’t have to worry about safety with proportions, making what once seemed incredibly intimidating an easy snack.