pickled gherkins??

[Annpan]

So I have my gherkin harvest (all 3 of them... but there might be a few more to come)

I want to pickle them sliced... I have left over spiced vinegar from lidl gherkins that I finished last week.... I also have cider vinegar but I don't have any spices or dill (which was why I wanted to use the old vinegar)

Can I just scrub them, slice them and stick them in the jar? or do I need to brine them first (nightmare) or cook them (I'm thinking not) maybe I should boil the vinegar first (to sterilise it?)

I don't know....


I don't have much of a kitchen just now... I have a hob and a few pots (no oven, no microwave, no bowls and an teeny amount of prep space - imagine a camping level of cooking)

Any easy ways to do this?

I have a few cookery books but they will most likely give me palpatations just looking at the ingredient list.

[Green Aura]

Just slice and salt them and they'll lacto-ferment like sauerkraut. We've only done them once - having left the gherkins to get too big OH insisted we had a go. The skins were a bit tough and after pickling were so sharp they cut your mouth - the insides were lovely though - so peel them if you're unsure.

[red]

i brine them overnight first.

[chilitony]

I grew 15 gherkin plants which i planted down the allotment, when the gherkins started to come i picked when they were about 2-4"
long which half filled a large jar (picked egg jar) and covered with vinegar.
After a few weeks they went pale in colour but tasted ok. Then a few more weeks a green scum formed on top of the vinegar.
Then i looked for recipes and found several different ones, so on the next picking i covered in salt for 24 hours and they started to shrivel up and then rinsed them off and put in jars with spirit vinegar with dill that i had also grown.
After thay had re-hydrated with the vinegar and then left for a couple of weeks i tasted. very salted.
The next lot i picked were simmered for ten minutes in water and pickled in vinegar with dill, they kept their colour but tasted very
watery inside perhaps not left long enough for the vinegar to do its stuff, we will see
Then the plants started to die off premiturley so could not perfect the pickling process this year, try again next

[Annpan]

hmmmm....

that is what I thought chilitony... now I have even less of a kitchen (a weekend of ripping up kitchen floor) I only have 3 big gerkhins so I might pickle them and eat them with in a week, or try to find another way of cooking/eating them....

[red]

looks familiar Susie

i do pretty much the same thing.

got loads of gherkins this year - let them get bigger and eat them as cucumbers, gave them away and pickled enough for a lifetime. pigs got the rest!

[chilitony]

thanks for that SusieGee i will try/do that next year, sounds alot easier than what ive been trying-many thanks Tony
probably wont be any for the pigs! red: