Quick Pickles: {Snow} Peas and Carrots

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I have the best intentions.  Weekly I order a bin of fresh, beautiful produce from Green Bean Delivery with plans to up my daily intake of fruits and vegetables.  Then life gets in the way, I eat carryout on the couch a couple of times, and I am left with task of making room in the fridge for my next weekly delivery.

This week, I found myself staring down some snow peas and pre-cut carrots languishing in the crisper drawer.  (The pre-cut carrots were not purchased from Green Bean, but were instead left over from a quick hummus run.  The bunch carrots in the shot above, however, are GB lovelies.)  With the refrigerator door wide-open, it occurred to me that I needed more pickles in my life.  A quick survey of the pickle shelf — yes, you read that correctly, an entire shelf — revealed jars of pickled cucumbers, peppers, olives, ginger, limes (my favorite Indian condiment), and tomatoes.  Not enough, I decided.

If you follow me on Pinterest, then you may know that I have already tried my hand at quick-pickled onions, beets, broccoli stems, and sugar snap peas.  With these recipes as inspiration, I prepped the snow peas and carrots for pickling.  In other words, I washed the snow peas and drained the pre-cut carrots.

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Then my obsessive nature kicked in, and I removed all the tiny little stems from the snow peas.

To make both sets of pickles, I followed this basic recipe.  For the snow peas, I used rice wine vinegar, ginger root, shallots, fresh mint, and red pepper flakes.  The carrots were made with cider vinegar, fresh thyme, whole garlic cloves, and whole peppercorns.  I encourage you to play around with ingredients to use what you have on hand and what pleases your palate.

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Quick Pickles
Ingredients
1 lb. produce of your choice, sliced into 1- or 2-bite-sized pieces if needed
2 c. vinegar of your choice (rice wine, cider, white wine, plain ol’ white…)
4 T. raw honey
1/4 t. ground or 1/2 t. whole dried pepper of your choice (peppercorns, red pepper…)
4 t. kosher salt
4 sprigs fresh, or 1 t. dried, herbs of your choice (dill, thyme, mint, oregano…)
aromatics of your choice, peeled and sliced (garlic cloves, sliced ginger root, sliced shallots…)

Directions
For firmer produce, like carrots or onions, blanch them in boiling water for 60 seconds, drain, and run under cold water to cool.

Place prepared produce in a quart canning jar, adding herbs and aromatics as you go.  Pack the produce as tightly as you can.  If you have some left over, it’s okay.  You will be able to fit it in later.

In a small saucepan, combine vinegar, honey, pepper, and kosher salt.  Heat this mixture until it begins to boil, then remove from heat.  Pour the hot vinegar mixture over the packed produce in the canning jar.  If you had any produce that wouldn’t fit before, you can probably fit it in now.  Place the lid on the jar and close.  Allow to cool to room temperature, then place in the refrigerator for at least 24 hours before eating.

Quick pickles will keep in the refrigerator for about a month.

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Just a little under 24 hours, I cracked these babies open.  Sometimes I have trouble following directions.

As I said at the beginning of this post, I have the best of intentions.  I had an hour between appointments today, and I convinced myself that it was enough time to come home, love on my dogs, take a couple shots for this post, and eat before driving the 30 minutes to my destination.  Ha!  Within minutes of taking the picture above, I was running out of the house with plate in hand.  I took bites at stoplights…and a few in-between.  This was made more challenging, since the Vegenaise and Organic Ville BBQ sauce were a little drippy on my Smoking Goose roasted turkey and swiss sandwich.  If you’ve ever had Rudi’s gluten-free bread, you know that there were also plenty of little holes from which the saucy goodness could escape.

Texting while driving is illegal in Indiana, as it is in many states.  I mention this, because eating this sandwich while driving probably wasn’t the smartest thing either.  But (dear husband, close your eyes for this part), I only almost hit one car, and that was while I licked my fingers…not while balancing the plate with my steering hand.

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I might have also taken this shot while the car was in motion, but I waited until the next stoplight to write my comment and post to Instagram.  Law enforcement officers, please do not arrest me.  I won’t do it again.

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