Are you looking for the perfect condiment for a barbecue or a sandwich? Fermented sweet and spicy pickles are a bright and flavourful combination of vegetables that are flavoured with garlic and ginger.
This is the PERFECT summer pickle. A colourful mix of flavours that are blended by the fermentation so that none of the flavours take over. They are delicious on burgers or hotdogs, in a sandwich with cheese. My kids like eating them straight from the jar!
Sweet and spicy pickles
This pickle is a bright combination of salty, spicy and sweet. It’s packed full of flavour from onion, garlic and ginger that mellows nicely with fermentation. The perfect pickle for a barbecue.
- Prep Time: 20 minutes
- Total Time: 20 minutes
- Yield: 1.5 quarts 1x
- Category: Pickles
- Method: Fermented
- Cuisine: Vegan
Ingredients
For Fermentation
- 1 cup thinly sliced cucumbers
- 1 coloured pepper, thinly sliced
- 1/2 red onion, thinly sliced
- 1 cup of carrots, thinly sliced in rounds
- 2 cloves of garlic, finely diced
- 1 tbsp of ginger root, finely chopped
- 1 chili pepper, sliced in circles (optional for those who like heat)
- 2 tbsp of culture (see notes)
- 1 tbsp non-iodized salt dissolved
- 1 quart of filtered water
Finishing
- 1/4 cup of sweetener of your choice (optional)
- 1 1/2 cup of cider vinegar
Instructions
- Mix all of the vegetables in a large glass bowl.
- Pack the vegetables into a glass jar(s) for fermenting. They don’t need to be pounded in like you do for sauerkraut, just tightly packed.
- Mix the salt and water until the salt is dissolved. Stir in the culture.
- Pour the liquid over the vegetables.
- Use a weight to keep the vegetables from floating, then cover and allow to ferment somewhere cool and dark for 2-3 days. A closet without a heater is perfect.
- When the fermentation is finished, drain the brine away from the vegetables, reserving 1 1/2 cups.
- Mix the sweetener and cider vinegar into the reserved brine and stir to dissolve. You should have around 3 1/2 cups of liquid.
- Pour the brine & cider vinegar mixture over the vegetables.
- Store in the fridge for at least 2 days to allow the flavours to blend.
- These should last for about a month in the fridge, however, the vegetables will get softer over time, so eat them sooner if you like a crisp pickle.
Notes
- You can use any vegetable starter culture that you want. I used whey as my starter, but you could also use sauerkraut juice, cultured cider vinegar or a purchased vegetable starter
. This is really just an insurance policy to make sure that the ferment goes quickly.
- Sweetener is not required. The resulting pickle would be more salty, spicy and sour, like an aged kimchi.
- You can reuse the pickling liquid for several batches of refrigerator pickles. When you’re almost done your pickles, fill a new jar with carrots, peppers and cucumber. Then pour over the brine and cider vinegar liquid over the vegetables and store in the fridge for 3 days to age. These won’t be exactly fermented, however, they will still infuse with the flavours of the original ferment. I usually make 2-3 extra batches of pickles from the original liquid.
. This is really just an insurance policy to make sure that the ferment goes quickly.Keywords: vegetarian, gluten free, keto, nut free, dairy free, egg free, probiotic, hotdogs, burgers, barbecue, summer, spring, fall
Would a tea towel be an appropriate loose covering? And okay to use a plastic bowl (I don’t have a large glass bowl, only stainless steel or plastic…)?
You could ferment in a jar, then transfer to a second jar for finishing. Glass is the least reactive… you just don’t want to have a metal or plastic flavour in your ferment. Though a hard plastic bowl or stainless steel should be fine.
Excellent! My kids especially enjoy this one.
★★★★★