In April we decided to start a little garden to take advantage of freshly grown herbs and veggies. We have just began to see the fruits of our labor (pun intended) and I’ve had a lot of fun adding them to new recipes. I know I get bored eating the same thing more than two days in a row so I’ve searched for some great uses for what we have in our garden.
Cucumbers have been growing like wild-fire. My boyfriend is not a fan of these veggies so it’s up to me to eat them all…and boy was there a lot of them! My first thought was salad…but honestly it got old quick. I always have loved dill pickles. Only one problem, canning seems like a lot of work. Well turns out you can make these little puppies and store them in a jar for about 3 months with no special canning procedures required. I took several recipes and put them together and came up with these deliciously garlic dills:
1) Start 8-10 cucumbers. Cut the tips of both sides of the cucumber and discard ( for whatever reason it keeps them crunchy). Slice length wise.
2)In a pain pour two cups of white vinegar ( white wine vinegar worked ok too), 2 cups filtered water, 2 tbsp salt, a dash of sugar(optional) and boil until salt dissolves.
3) put pickles in a big jar ( or 3-4 small jars) add 1 tbsp of whole peppercorns, 1 tbsp of whole coriander, 1 bay leaf, a dash of red pepper flakes, 1 small chopped onion, 4-6 chopped cloves of garlic..you can never have too much, and 2tbsp of dried dill (or 4 fresh).
4) pour vinegar solution over pickles. Make sure the lid is on tight and slowly tilt the jar and make sure the solution is covering the entire pickle and spices distributed (though some will float to the top). Store in the fridge – wait about 3 days before you eat one.
If the water is a bit cloudy you can use pickling salt instead, but it’s entirely fine to use normal salt.
Here are links to the two recipes I combined…Epicurious Fast Favorite Garlic Dill Pickles and All Recipes Homemade Refrigerator Pickles
When I cook I rarely follow a recipe to a tee and sort of put my own personal spin on it. Do you have any garden veggie recipes you love? Have you combined recipes to make something even more spectacular?
Food for Thought 