Making sweet and sour pickles is so easy! This recipe is great to use on burgers or to spice up salads and sandwiches. It is also a way to collect extra cucumbers.
List of ingredients
and perfumes:
recipe
Summary of the recipe
Sliced cucumbers are dried, then placed in jars with herbs and covered with boiling sweet vinegar.
Choose very fresh cucumbers: directly from the garden (cucumbers are easy to grow and often very generous) or, failing that, from the market, if possible from a local grower; It makes a difference in taste and crunch.
In addition, choose cucumbers that are not too dense: it is better if they do not have seeds yet.
Grate the cucumber
Wash the cucumber and cut it into 2 to 4 mm thick slices
Keep them in a colander
Sprinkle with coarse salt, without excess; This salt will corrode the cucumber.
We let these slices of cucumber drain for 1 to 2 hours, letting their water fall to the bottom of the strainer. Be careful, they should not be left in salt for more than 2 hours, as they will lose too much water and dry out unpleasantly in the pickle.
The cucumber slices are then rinsed under the tap to remove all salt residue. This is an essential step to avoid too salty pickles.
Prepare the spices
Onions or chives are chopped.
Small peppers are deseeded and cut into small pieces
Prepare 5 to 10 peppercorns per jar
Clean the jars thoroughly
Prepare 1 or 2 jars for about 200 g of cucumbers that are well closed (restored from storage or jam, their lids are not twisted). The jar and its lid must be perfectly clean: they have just come out of the dishwasher or better, they are washed in boiling water, not completely sterilized, but almost.
potting
At the bottom of the pot, place 1 to 2 cm of spices, placing the slices on top, lining up as much as possible.
Feel free to add a little more onion, pepper and chilli in the middle, then fill up to 1.5cm from the edges.
Prepare sweet and sour vinegar and cover future pickles with it
In a saucepan, heat 250 grams of vinegar with 50 grams of sugar.
As soon as the sugar melts and it begins to boil, immediately pour over the cucumbers, filling almost to the brim: no pieces should come out of the surface.
Close the jar immediately.
Tips for a successful recipe
To taste them, wait at least 15 days, until the cucumbers are sufficiently marinated.
Use pickles
The cucumber pickle recipe is a great way to preserve surplus cucumbers from the vegetable garden: cucumbers, when they yield, are generous!
This recipe is dedicated to those who like to make their own homemade burgers. These sweet and sour pickles are tender and crunchy, spicy and very slightly spicy, if you add espalette peppers: they’re great for spicing up burgers, a sandwich, salad, garnishing a charcuterie board or simply nibbling. An aperitif.
Best of all, this recipe is simple and easy!
saving
Vinegar preservation is an ancestral method. Here, in this Sweet and Sour Cucumber Pickle recipe, preserves are made for 3 combined reasons:
- Cucumber has the least amount of water that is separated
- The acidity of vinegar
- presence of sugar
This cucumber pickle can be stored in well-sealed jars away from light, like gherkins, for over a year.
Once opened, like pickles, these pickles will be stored in the refrigerator, usually eaten within a week if possible. However, even open the jar, as long as the pucks do not overflow the surface, not much will happen.
Strategy: You can make different sizes of jars to adapt the amount of pickles you eat and according to the usage you will make them.
Obviously, this recipe has many possible variations.
Cucumber Slice Size:
If the slice is perfect for putting on a hamburger, sandwich, or appetizer toast, slicing the cucumber into long sticks may be interesting for other uses, in fact thicker slices give more crunch. In this case:
- To serve as an aperitif
- In a salad or a bowl of vegetables, the sticks are more practical cut into small cubes
- Instead of rituals
spices
The herbs can also be changed: if you are very sensitive to it, you can remove the pepper or add many other flavors:
- There are different types of peppers, and some bring a specific flavor.
- Fresh aromatic herbs: thyme, dill, tarragon…
- Seeds: Cumin, Fennel, Coriander…
Vinegar
We are using a white kitchen vinegar here, which brings out the color of the pickles better, but other vinegars, colored or less neutral, can be used, such as cider vinegar, for example.
sugar
You can use white, brown, beet or cane sugar. You can even replace it with honey.
It is also possible to make cucumber pickles with vinegar and without sugar.
So, how you flavor your cucumber pickle is up to you. The basic recipe here is excellent. If you’re trying to diversify, avoid changing too many parameters at once. Start by experimenting with different herbs: it’s amazing how a simple fennel leaf in a jar can subtly change the flavor of this pickle!
Thank you Vronique MACRELLE