American Bread & Butter Pickles

The boy and I have been pickling this year’s shallots so they will be ready in time for Christmas. He keeps telling me not to cry as we will grow more next year. Har Har!

We had some spiced vinegar left over and rather than chuck it away we made bread and butter pickles with regular onions and cucumber. The boy will polish these off with corned beef sandwiches in no time.

4 cups thinly sliced small cucumbers

2 cups sliced onions

¼ cup flaky salt

A handful of ice cubes

2 cups white vinegar

1 ½ cups sugar

2tsp celery seeds

2tsp mustard seeds

1 ½ tsp turmeric

Mix the cucumber, onion and salt in a bowl. This does two things – it draws out the water and means that the mix will just suck in the vinegar. Cover with ice. I have no idea what this brings to the party but I have looked up three recipes for this and they all use it.

After 4-8 hours, drain and rinse in a colander.

Combine the vinegar, sugar, celery seeds, mustard seeds and turmeric in a pan and get it to the boil.

Sterilise the jars and pack the onion and cucumber in. Pour the hot vinegar over to cover. The turmeric makes it go a very special golden colour.

Leave it for at least two weeks for the pickling gods to do their magic.

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By the way our pickled shallots were even easier. Once peeled, we salted them overnight. Then boiled up malt vinegar with dried chillies and bay leaves – roughly 3 chillies and 2 bay leaves per jar (our bay tree died so the boy pinched them from the potted ones outside our local pub). Packed the shallots into the jar, burned our fingers fishing out the bay leaves and chillies and stuffed them in. Poured over the vinegar and sealed. They need 6 weeks, so just in time for Christmas. No matter how many times we wash our hands they still smell of shallots and the kitchen smells of boiling vinegar. It will be worth it when the Christmas cheese board comes out.