~ Jamilah's Hands ~: Adventures in Pickling!

We did a little maintenance harvesting after I got back from my trip to NY in July. A couple of these, a few of those - not enough for any major endeavors, but just enough to take my first stab at pickling our garden bounty! I happened to have a couple of canning jars around the kitchen that we usually use to store herbs, and all of the necessary ingredients. We picked a handful of padron peppers, some bunching onions, 5 or 6 carnival and tonda carrots, and garlic that has been drying for the last few weeks. I’ve never pickled anything before, so I picked a simple recipe from one of DudeLife's fancy cookbooks and went to town.

Harvested garlic before the drying process.

Fresh picked padron peppers.

The Pickling Process: Peel 5 cloves garlic and 5 shallots or small onions. Slice carrots. I decided to leave the peppers whole, but they could be sliced as well. Pack sterile jar full of vegetables. Add some peppercorns and spices (I added whole mustard seed, ground cloves, fresh and dried dill, red pepper flakes, a little cayenne pepper and a bay leaf). Bring to a boil 2 cups white vinegar, 1 cup water, 1/4 cup coarse salt. Pour over vegetables to fill jar. Seal and refrigerate, giving at least a few weeks for things to get pickley.

Pickle batch numero uno.

We opened the jar up this weekend, and I'm pretty proud of our first attempt! The flavor profile of the pickley-spices was pretty good. The only thing I will be changing for sure moving forward is the amount of salt this recipe calls for - waaaaay too much. I will be cutting the salt in half the next time.

Alas, we pickled a second jar before a couple weeks before opening the first, so those ones will likely be too salty as well. The second batch was similar to the first, in that there were garden carrots, padron peppers and garlic. But we also added in sliced white and red onions, a few new mex twilight peppers and 4 or 5 super spicy dried peppers that my friend Candice grew and mailed to me.