Today Mat asked us “What are Meatloafing’s tips to fight the recession?” His own tips included bringing lunch to work, composting, and gardening. We couldn’t agree more.

Our answer? Pickling: a simple luxury that’s cheap, low-stress, and extremely fulfilling. And lately we’ve really been into the kind of cooking where you just throw some stuff into a jar and let it sit for a couple weeks. Inspired by Yossi—who recently pickled some beets!—as well as the recipes in Arthur Schwartz’s Jewish Home Cooking: Yiddish Recipes Revisited, we finally picked (heh) up some green beans and made these deliciously snappy pods. Yep, it’s true: pickling is the new plaid.

Filling the jars with brine:

Pickling from Mollie Lauffer on Vimeo.

Continue reading for photos and recipe!

Aerial view of jars.
Those are mustard seeds on top of the beans; I forgot to add them earlier.

Ingredients

• 2 one-quart glass jars w/ lids. Make sure these are really clean and free of soap residue.
• Enough beans to fill jars (roughly 1 1/2 lbs; if you buy about $3 worth of beans, you’re probably good)
• 2 1/2 cups water
• 1 1/4 cups white vinegar
• 1 1/4 cups cider vinegar
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 1 1/2 tablespoons kosher salt
• a bunch of fresh dill
• 2-4 cloves garlic, peeled (sliced, left whole, smashed, whatever. just don’t chop. also, the more broken-down the garlic is, the stronger the taste will be, so be careful.)
• 1 teaspoon black peppercorns
• 1-2 teaspoons crushed red pepper (use 2 if you like a lot of heat, but be careful!)
• 2 teaspoons mustard seeds

Directions

1. Snap off the ends of the beans and wash them well. Give the dill a rinse, too.
2. In a saucepan, bring water, vinegars, sugar and salt to a boil and make sure sugar dissolves.
3. Add garlic and spices to jars (halve each of the amounts; you can eyeball it).
4. Stuff a bunch of dill and the beans into jars. Really pack them in there; it helps to lay the jar on its side.
5. Pour vinegar mixture into jars. The beans should all be covered, save for a few extra-tall ends.
6. Let the jars cool to room temp, then cover with lids and refrigerate for at least a week. (!)

The beans, patiently waiting.
The brine will keep getting darker the longer the pickles sit.

We’ll check in when our beans have finished pickling. The hardest part is waiting! Try to be patient, though, because the beans get really good at about two weeks.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 13th, 2009 at 10:18 pm and is filed under food, recipes, well-being. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.