Homemade Vegetable Medley Pickling Inspiration and Recipes: Part 2 of 3

Easy Homemade Pickling Ideas and Inspiration

In this blog series, we are featuring vegetable medley recipes and inspiration for for our Granny’s Bread & Butter pickling pouch as well as our popular Heatstroke pickling pouch. These are two uniquely different flavors, which makes this an especially fun and creative pickling journey.

[Here is where you can also view Part 1 and Part 3 of this homemade pickled vegetable medley recipe series.]

Recipe 3: Granny’s Bread and Butter

First up is our NEW Granny’s Bread & Butter pickling pouch, which is our sweetest pouch, and has a mild spicing of mustard seeds and turmeric. It’s the perfect choice to make pickle chips for your burgers and is a fan favorite as a pickling snack and staple.

It’s also a great pouch to make a relish-like vegetable medley which you can use to top hot dogs or grilled sausages. If you follow us, you know this is a recipe we’ve talked about in the past. With the warm Midwest weather coming in, you may go to this recipe as a “salsa” and serve with corn tortilla chips as well. See that recipe here.

Fittingly, sweet corn is the featured vegetable here.

Ingredients:

Great Lakes Pickling Company’s Granny’s Bread and Butter Easy-to-Make Pickling Pouch
Sweet corn
Green onion
Red onion
Red bell pepper
Cilantro
Jalapeños

To begin, select 3 ears of sweet corn for this easy homemade pickling vegetable medley recipe.
You’ll strip the kernels off, as shown below. You will also want to reserve any juices (corn milk) that you can to add to your water later.
There are 2 onions in this recipe. The green onion is used somewhat for its flavor but even more so for its color so you’ll want to use the green end and cut the stalks into ¼” pieces.
Likewise, the red onion is used half for its flavor and half for its color; and again, cut (dice) it into ¼” pieces. You are aiming for all of the vegetables to have about the same size as the kernels of corn, so that they mix together evenly.
For the red bell pepper, you’ll want to shave off the white inner pith/membrane to give your final cut pieces a much more vivid color and a better shape. You are also aiming for the same size cuts as above.
For cilantro, the finer you chop/mince it, the more bitter it can become so a loose chop is recommended rather than a fine mince.
Lastly, chop the jalapeños. Depending on how much you like heat, you will want to take that approach with the seeds for this vegetable. For more heat, more seeds. For less heat, less seeds. Having said that, jalapeños can be mild or very hot depending on many growing conditions, so you may wish to munch on just a bit of raw jalapeño before you decide on how much to add to your pickling pouch.
Add all of these vegetables/herb to a mixing bowl and toss.
Follow the directions on your Granny’s Bread and Butter pouch from here.
Although you can enjoy this recipe in as few as 3 days, we like to give ours a full 5 days to allow all the flavors to meld together well.

Recipe 4: Heatstroke

We now move from a sweet and mild relish-like medley to a bold, HOT, medley of stick-like shapes with our hottest pouch, Heatstroke.

This medley includes 7 items and turns out quite colorful. Depending on how long you cut your pieces, an example is shown below.

We had a bit of fun with this!

Ingredients:

Great Lakes Pickling Company’s Heatstroke Easy-to-Make Pickling Pouch
8 Green beans
1-2 Carrots
1 Yellow squash
6 Asparagus spears
1/4 Red onion
6 White Mushrooms
4 Okra

The green beans here are the standard ones you’ll find in your grocery store, but, if you can find them, the French Haricot Vert type, which are slender, straighter and more tender are an even better choice. Leave the tips on and trim the stem ends (or snap off). *We used about 8 green beans.
Peel the carrots and cut them into sticks about 4” x 3/8”. We’ll shoot for that size on most of the remaining vegetables that can be cut that size. *We used about 6 or 7 carrot sticks.
For the asparagus, we cut them to about 4” length and peeled them. *We used about 6 asparagus spears. Peeling your asparagus is an important step for 3 reasons:
- Removing the outer skin makes them more tender and reduces that stringy mess in your teeth.
- The brine solution penetrates the stems much better.
- The bi-color look of the heads and stems are much more attractive.
Pick a yellow squash that is as straight as you can find, wash it and then cut off long panels leaving about ¼” to 3/8” of inner pulp on the outer skin as shown. Then cut into about 4” length. We omitted using more of the inner pulp for both aesthetics and taste. *We used about 6 yellow squash sticks.
The red onions will never keep a stick shape but they are an important member of this recipe for the flavor and color that they add. Cut them as shown. *We used about ¼ of a medium sized red onion.
We had some fun with the white mushrooms. In one hand, simply (but carefully) grip a small paring knife with only 1” of the tip exposed as you close your fist around it. Pick up the mushroom with the cap facing towards you, then gently press the tip of the knife blade down onto the cap to make a 1/8” deep, stamped impression. If you do this multiple times, going around the cap’s face, you can create a star, as shown. We also “fluted” a mushroom cap (shown next to the star example), but that’s a whole other lesson. *We used about 6 small caps.
Lastly, the okra is a pretty simple. Trim off the stem ends and either leave them whole, or cut them in half, lengthwise. *We used about 4 okra, 2 whole and 4 halves.
Follow the directions on the Heatstroke pouch and you’ll have a wonderful outcome!