WV Culinary Team: Pickling peppers, cucumbers and onions in the fridge

By Julie Robinson, WV Culinary Team   –   Charleston Gazette-Mail

My name isn’t Peter Piper, but I did pick a peck of peppers — so naturally, I pickled them.

The three little jalapeño pepper plants we added to our garden plot this spring turned out to be prolific producers. Our taste buds can only handle so much heat chopped into fresh salsa, so I looked for another use for them.

The peppers soon went the same way as our bumper crop of cucumbers, which reside in canning jars in the form of refrigerator dill pickle spears.

The process of refrigerating, rather than canning, cucumbers results in a more crisp pickle than I have tasted in the home-canned variety.

The heat required for canning softens the cucumbers, so pickles lack that classic Vlasic snap. Refrigerated pickles and peppers have a shorter shelf life than canned and sealed ones, but they are easier to make and require no special equipment.

The recipe I used said the pickles would be safe for consumption for up to one month, but we’ve eaten pickles much older than that without any repercussions.

Ingredients are important. Start with fresh, crisp and well-washed vegetables. Use vinegar with an acidity level of at least 5. The vinegar/water solution must contain at least 50 percent vinegar. Use canning, kosher or dairy salt, not iodized or table salt. Iodized and table salt contain an anticaking ingredient that can turn the brine cloudy.

Refrigerated pickled vegetables can be packed in any jar with a snug-fitting lid. No need to purchase canning jars and lids. Just pack the sliced vegetables tightly in the clean jars, pour the heated brine over them and allow to cool slightly. Screw on the lid and place in the refrigerator for at least 24 hours. Actual hands-on time is about half-an-hour per batch. That’s it.

Pleased with the results of the dill pickles and pickled jalapeños experiments, I decided to pickle banana peppers and red onions as well. About $3 worth of mild yellow, orange and red banana peppers from a local farmer yielded 1 quart and 1 pint of the peppers that are so good on pizzas, sandwiches and salads. Unless you like very hot peppers, be sure to buy the mild banana peppers. The included recipe has the option of adding strips of jalapeño or serrano peppers to add some zip to a jar of mild peppers.

Three medium red onions also produced 1 quart and 1 pint of bright pink pickled onions. The heated vinegar softens the onions and tames their harsh compounds, producing a tart topping for tacos, barbecue and burgers.

We’ll enjoy these pickled vegetables for months. As I placed the jars in the refrigerator, I fully understood a comment made by my mother, a longtime canner of vegetables from the family garden plot, that the reason she canned was the satisfaction of seeing the filled jars all lined up on a shelf. They are a pretty sight.

Julie Robinson is, among other things, a freelance writer who spent eight years writing features for the Charleston Gazette. She is also the executive director of the West Virginia Nursery & Landscape Association and owns a custom floral design business called Natural Elements. She and her husband Reed live in Charleston.

She can be reached by email at julial@suddenlink.net.