My husband Nik has worked hard to develop an aquaponics garden, a garden that provides healthy food without the use of insecticides. I utilize produce from that garden each and every day in my kitchen, and have to say there’s something extremely rewarding about eating herbs and vegetables you have grown yourself. I personally have never had much luck in the growing department, if I even LOOK at a plant it tends to wither and die! Nik is the farmer in our household, and meals are now much tastier due to the hours he spends nurturing his plants.
We recently harvested some cucumbers, and they were humungous! I like cucumbers well enough, but the specimens Nik left on the kitchen counter left me wondering what on earth to DO with them. When measured, they were more than a foot in length and weighed well over a pound, certainly more cucumber than we would be willing or able to eat. If they had been smaller I might have considered making pickles, but they were too big – WAY too big. I had never made pickles but always buy them for Nik – he likes dill or gherkin pickles with his sandwiches – and I knew that our gigantic cucumbers didn’t look anything like those on the supermarket shelves, not even remotely!
The more I thought about pickles, the more determined I became to make some using those unsuitably large cucumbers. My first foray for recipes via Google tempted me to give up, there was no way I was going to import the special jars and big vat needed for pickling, neither was I willing to stand over boiling pots. I had almost quit searching for cucumber pickle recipes when my eyes landed on something much simpler and more doable, namely “Refrigerator Pickles”. Aha!
I decided to use whatever I had in my kitchen for the trial batch of pickles. I cut the large cucumbers into thin rounds, then sliced the rounds in half. I then packed the cucumber pieces tightly into 3 empty jars, slipping cloves of garlic, sliced onion, bay leaves and balls of allspice between the layers. I would have liked to add a sprig or two of fresh dillweed, but that particular herb doesn’t do well in our garden. I then mixed what is called a “brine” using 2 cups of water and two cups of white vinegar. To sweeten the deal, I added 6 tablespoons of pure maple syrup, a precious commodity which I fortunately had lurking in the back of my cupboard! Honey will work just as well as a sweetener, and is more easily obtainable in St. Vincent than maple syrup. I added 2 tablespoons of coarse sea salt to the brine along with some cracked black peppercorns, then sprinkled in some chili flakes to finish it off. I poured the brine over the cucumbers, then put the 3 jars in the fridge.
According to the recipe for refrigerator pickles they should be left three weeks before being eaten, but Nik and I dug in after one week and are quite pleased with the result – they are delicious! Next time I will omit the chili flakes, in my opinion they give the pickles too much of a “bite” and I figure pieces of fresh ginger and perhaps some flavour pepper would be nicer. Experimentation is the fun part of making something new, and this particular experiment was incredibly easy. The big cucumbers that initially filled me with dismay have been turned into something I honestly like, they’re great mixed in a salad, placed on top of cheese or simply eaten on their own, and the sliced onions I added for flavour are a tasty bonus. Another bonus is the fact that pickled foods are filled with good bacteria called probiotics, making them important for gut health. Pickled cucumbers are also non-fattening, offering a healthy and tasty snack for those striving to lose weight. Too many cucumbers in your garden? Don’t waste them, have some fun in your kitchen and make refrigerator pickles! They are healthy, delicious and extremely easy and inexpensive to make, my first batch of pickles will definitely not be my last!