Pickles | Quick Pickles | Shrubs | Ferments

Pickles | Quick Pickles | Shrubs | Ferments

Sustainable seasonal recipes for Pickles | Quick Pickles | Shrubs | Ferments. Pickles are an amazing way to preserve in season fruits and vegetables and to enhance and intensify flavours through flavour pairing with herbs, spices and other fruits and vegetables. Pickles offer a means of preservation and upcycling usually disgarded parts of produce such as beetroot stems.

Heat treated pickles

Heat treated pickles offer a way of preserving produce with vinegar, flavoured with sugar, herbs, spices, citrus zests or chilis. Heat treated pickles use sterlised jars and heat treating and have a longer shelf life. The flavour of heat treated pickles intensifies over time, some of my favourites are:

• -cumquats or kumquats
• -jalapenos

Quick refrigerator pickles

Quick pickles or refrigerator pickles are a quicker cold form of pickling that has the advantage of maintaining crispness and colour after pickling. Quick pickles are quicker to make, have a shorter shelf life and offer a way to use up kitchen scraps and parts of produce often viewed as rubbish. Some of my favorite quick pickles include:

• -rhubarb
• -watermelon rinds

Shrubs, shrub syrups, drinking vinegars

Shrub syrups or drinking vinegars are another form of quick pickling that relies on a maceration of fruit or vegetables with sugar, herbs and spices,  preserved with vinegar. The resulting shrub syrup is delicious in cold drinks, cocktails and desserts. Some of my favourite shrub syrups include:

• -Pineapple fennel
• -Blood orange

Ferments

Ferments pickle fruits and vegetables by a process of fermentation. Some of my favourite ferment recipes include:

• -Beetroot sauerkraut with cinnamon
• -Pink purple cabbage sauerkraut