In this particular case, the laziest recipe ever: I had just finished a jar of storebought spicy dill pickles (some standard grocery store brand, Claussen or Vlasic probably, I can't remember). I had some carrots around, so I rinsed them off, stuck them in the leftover brine, and left them alone for maybe two days. Worked like gangbusters.
I do sometimes make pickles from scratch, but in a similarly lazy, throw some water and vinegar and salt and spices in a jar with whatever I'm pickling, stick it in the refrigerator, look at it in a week, and eat it if it hasn't turned black and sometimes even then. (That's just a reaction of the iodine that makes it look less pretty and doesn't influence the taste; you can get around it if you buy pickling salts, but for me part of the beauty of pickles is their non-fussiness. This leads to uncertainty, but I guess you could say I take a wabi-sabi approach to pickling.)
With refrigerator pickles, you don't really have to worry about botulism or any of the dangerous stuff that can happen in fermenting, so basically, you just put whatever it is you're pickling in a clean jar, fill the empty space halfway with white vinegar and half with water, add a bunch of salt, and throw in whatever herbs (fresh or dried) you think seem appealing at the time. Stick it in the fridge. Wait two or three days. Done.
The only downside to this approach rather than the more labor intensive one is the preservative one - refrigerator pickles last maybe a few months, not potentially years. But as stated, I always wind up eating them within about a week of putting them in the jar, so it's never an issue.
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Date: 2013-08-30 04:47 pm (UTC)I do sometimes make pickles from scratch, but in a similarly lazy, throw some water and vinegar and salt and spices in a jar with whatever I'm pickling, stick it in the refrigerator, look at it in a week, and eat it if it hasn't turned black and sometimes even then. (That's just a reaction of the iodine that makes it look less pretty and doesn't influence the taste; you can get around it if you buy pickling salts, but for me part of the beauty of pickles is their non-fussiness. This leads to uncertainty, but I guess you could say I take a wabi-sabi approach to pickling.)
With refrigerator pickles, you don't really have to worry about botulism or any of the dangerous stuff that can happen in fermenting, so basically, you just put whatever it is you're pickling in a clean jar, fill the empty space halfway with white vinegar and half with water, add a bunch of salt, and throw in whatever herbs (fresh or dried) you think seem appealing at the time. Stick it in the fridge. Wait two or three days. Done.
The only downside to this approach rather than the more labor intensive one is the preservative one - refrigerator pickles last maybe a few months, not potentially years. But as stated, I always wind up eating them within about a week of putting them in the jar, so it's never an issue.