The Joy of Pickling: 200 Flavor-Packed Recipes for All Kinds of Produce from Garden or Market - Hardcover

Ziedrich, Linda

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1558321322 ISBN 13: 9781558321328

Publisher: Harvard Common Pr, 1998

Synopsis

Turn the colors and flavors of the harvest into a year-round delight.

About this title

Review

Pickling food seems like a form of culinary alchemy to most of us. Or we recall it as something grandmothers used to do, laboring over heaps of vegetables and huge, steaming kettles to turn out jars of jewel-like pickles and piquant chutneys.

In the first chapter of The Joy of Pickling, Linda Ziedrich demystifies the pickling process. She explains the difference between fresh pickles made with vinegar and longer-keeping, salt-preserved, fermented pickles. Her detailed explanation of canning methods, including low-temperature pasteurization, shows how to avoid risky problems.

After reading the opening of this pickle primer, go straight to the "Quick" and "Freezer Pickle" chapters and discover how easy it is to make Green Olives with Lemon and Thyme and Freezer Dill Slices without any sterilizing, boiling, or safety issues. In addition, you get to enjoy them within 24 hours. When you are more confident, let Ziedrich guide you through pickling Spicy Broccoli, Pig Ears, Korean Kimchi, and Irish Corned Beef. Her three recipes for pickled eggs are also bound to please. --Dana Jacobi

From the Inside Flap

"By working a special magic on an abundance of produce, Linda Ziedrich has transformed a lost art into something both necessary and delightful. This is a book about applying simple methods to simple ingredients to produce tastes and textures that are both unexpected and extraordinary." -From the Foreword by Christopher Kimball

The joys of pickling come neither from magic nor alchemy. It may seem as if they do, so surprising and unforeseen are the splendid flavors of a well-made pickle when you consider the humble ingredients that first went into the crock or jar. Pickling is an ancient art, practiced nearly everywhere around the globe, that preserves food with salt or vinegar. But just as no one cooks a meal solely to fill a belly, hardly anyone preserves food only to make them last longer.

As Linda Ziedrich demonstrates, making pickles means more than simply preserving the harvest. The pickler presides over a metamorphosis in which the various elements, from the produce itself, to the salty brine or the vinegar bath, to the herbs, spices, oils, and firming agents, combine in remarkably tasty ways, whether through simple processes like marination or intricate ones like fermentation. After years of testing, Ziedrich reveals how every component, right down to the basics like water, light, time, and temperature, plays its role. The reader of these pages who wants to understand fully how pickling works, or the reader who just wants to follow and enjoy the recipes, will benefit amply from Ziedrich's hard-won wisdom.

Above all, Joy of Pickling is a celebration of great eating, in more than 200 recipes. Here are the classic cucumber pickles, like half-sours, dills, bread-and-butters, cornichons, and more, plus abundant recipes for things that gardeners grow in surplus, like zucchini, peas, corn, and green beans. Here are pickles of every type and stripe, including fermented, fresh, sweet, quick, and freezer pickles. A whole chapter is devoted to the traditional European and Asian cabbage pickles, while another explores Far Eastern rice-bran, miso, and soy-sauce pickles. Ziedrich interprets venerable American mixed pickles, like piccalilli and chow chow, and Old World combinations, like Jardinire, and Giardiniera, with a master's touch, just as she offers up a wealth of novel creations that bring this old art back to life in completely new ways.

For the rookie pickler, who wants lucid instructions, clearheaded safety advice, and loads of scrumptious ideas, or the pickling veteran-either the one who wants to branch out from cukes and green beans or the one who is still searching for that ultimate jar of kosher dills-The Joy of Pickling is a comprehensive resource that captures in its pages all the magnificent flavors that can be sealed in a jar.

Edition details

• Publisher: Harvard Common Pr
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 1558321322
• ISBN 13: 9781558321328
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 382