Tuesday, July 11, 2006

Zucchini makes great pickles

Busy weekend pickling again. Last summer was the first I had made pickles, thanks to "The Joy of Pickling" by Linda Ziedrich. The Zucchini Bread & Butter recipe I liked even better than either of the other two Bread & Butter recipes, so this year we didn't plant cucumbers, instead planting lots and lots of zucchini and summer squash.

Well, those of you familiar with growing squash will know, when one has zucchini, one has lots of zucchini! We started picking the first of them this weekend. Sunday I canned 9 pints and 12 jelly jars (1/2 pints) of Zucchini Bread & Butter pickles. I used hot water bath canning as it's faster than the pressure canner for these high-acid foods.

I also tried another of the recipes that I'd enjoyed last year, an Asian type pickle. I don't have my book in front of me to verify the name of the recipe, but I think it was Sesame Pickle. This is a fresh pickle, which is ready to eat in just a few hours. One of my kids and I had enjoyed them very much last summer when made with Asian cucumbers.

This time I tried it with zucchini. We made a triple batch from two rather huge zucchini's, cutting out the seed area, and chunking the rest. I was thrilled with the results and will be eating a lot of this kind of pickle. I think I'll go through the book some more and see what else I can convert to use zucchini and summer squash!

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