Chow Chow Pickle
Traditionally this Appalachian preserve captures the last of the summer harvest. It’s sweet and tangy and is great on sandwiches, with anything grilled and even with hard cheese. Make multiple jars so you can share the bounty with friends.
It’s ideal to use up things that you otherwise might discard, like the stalks and stems from kale, chard, beetroot, broccoli, cauliflower and so on. I also like to use a whole rainbow of colours but be wary of using too much purple (cabbage/red onion or beetroot) as they can dye the entire batch.
ingredients
- choose from: broccoli/cabbage stalks, cabbage, capsicum, carrot, chard/silverbeet stems, corn, daikon, onion, radish, tomatoes (firmer/less ripe even green will work), zucchini etc
- fine salt (devoid of anti-caking agents preferably)
pickling liquid
- 1 cup white vinegar
- 1 cup white sugar
- 1 tsp ground turmeric
- 1 tsp yellow mustard seeds
Wash the vegetables well and trim away any browned or unusable sections. Finely dice the vegetables until they are all approximately the same size then sprinkle liberally with salt and toss well. Let this sit for a minimum of an hour before rinsing the vegetables in cold water and draining in a colander.
In a small pan bring the vinegar and sugar to a boil until the sugar has dissolved then cool and stir in spices. Depending on the volume of your vegetables (they lose moisture during the salting process which means they also lose some mass) this will alter the amount of liquid required to cover the chopped vegetables.
Pack the vegetable mix into clean dry jars and top with pickling liquid then seal. Generally I don’t sterilise my jars and just opt for cleaning the jars. This means the chow chow must be continuously refrigerated. However, if you want to keep the chow chow unrefrigerated, you’ll need to sterilise the jars. You’ll find plenty of directions for this online if you need it.
Wait a couple for weeks before using.