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Pickled carrots first came on my radar when I was living in Austria. I believe we were visiting a Polish woman, and she fed my missionary companion and I lunch. I don't actually remember what the main components of the lunch were, but I remember that this woman had jars and jars of pickled vegetables in her fridge.
Now, this was at the beginning of my culinary journey, and I hadn't really realized that pickling is a process and not just something that is done exclusively to cucumbers to put on a burger.
This nice woman had pickled cauliflower, cabbage, green beans, asparagus I think, and pickled carrots. The pickled carrots were my favorite. Carrots have a natural sweetness, and that combined with the vinegary bite is really pleasant to me. Apparently it's pleasant to a ton of other people too, because tons of cultures have recipes for pickled carrots.
Pickling is the process of preserving food by either anaerobic fermentation or immersion in vinegar (Source: Wikipedia). Of course before refrigeration, pickling was a critical method for preserving food for the winter, travel, or making good use of excess produce.
Foods pickled through fermentation include sauerkraut, preserved lemons, and kimchi.
Vinegar brined pickles include pickled cucumbers, and many other vegetables, including carrots.
Quick pickling means that we are not using sterilized jars (clean of course, but not completely sterilized like for canning), and these pickles will go in the refrigerator and need to be used in a few weeks. They cannot sit on a shelf for a year. Making quick pickled carrots only takes about 10 minutes. It's so easy. Let's get to it!
Preparing The Carrots
The first step on your way to pickled carrot enlightenment is to julienne your carrots. That's a fancy way of saying cut the carrots into matchstick shapes. To do this you peel your whole carrots and cut them into 2 or 3 inch pieces. Next you cut those pieces into planks, and then slice the planks into the matchstick shape.
At the end you will have a pile of carrots that looks like this:
After your carrots are prepared, stuff them into a 1 quart mason jar and prepare the brine.
Finishing Your Quick Pickled Carrots
The brine is very easy. Just combine the water, vinegars, sugar and salt in a small or medium saucepot and bring to a boil. That's it. Then you very carefully pour the hot brine over the carrots like so:
Let the jar come to room temperature and then place it in the fridge. You can eat the pickled carrots immediately and they are yummy, but the flavor gets better with time. Keep your pickled carrots in the fridge and use them within a few weeks. Voila! Easy quick pickled carrots.
Now you're ready to put your pickled carrots on sandwiches, in salads, or on top of rich dishes and rice bowls like this Easy Bibimbap Recipe With Ground Beef. I can't wait for you to try them!
What are your favorite kind of pickles? Please tell me in the comments, and be sure to share this post with your friends!
These tangy little carrots add dimension and excitement to any dish. Put them on salads, sandwiches, rice bowls, and anything else you can think of!
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Prep Time 10 minutesmins
Total Time 10 minutesmins
Course Condiment
Cuisine Asian Fusion
Equipment
1 pint mason jar
Ingredients
1 and ½cupsjulienned carrots (matchstick)about 3 whole carrots
½ cupdistilled white vinegar
½ cuprice vinegar
1cupwater
¼cupgranulated sugar
1 and ½teaspoonfine sea salt
Instructions
First, julienne your carrots by peeling them, cutting them into 2 to 3 inch pieces. Then cut those pieces into rectangular planks, then cut those planks into a matchstick shape. You can also use the julienne setting on a mandoline, just be sure to use cut resistant gloves.
In a medium saucepot, bring the white vinegar, rice vinegar, water, sugar, and salt to a boil. This is your brine.
While the brine is heating, place your carrots in a 1 pint mason jar.
When the brine has come to a boil, very carefully pour the brine over the carrots, leaving about an inch of space at the top of the jar.
Let the jar cool to room temperature, and then place the lid on and stick it in the fridge.
Quick pickled carrots can be eaten immediately, but the flavor improves with a few hours in the fridge.
Add your washed and sliced produce, packing the jar tightly. In a medium saucepan, bring the water, vinegar, salt and sugar to a boil. Remove from heat and carefully pour into pickling jar until all contents are submerged. Close the lid on the jar tightly.
For best flavor results, wait at least 24 hours before eating the pickled carrots. The longer you wait, the more intense in flavor they will get. Make sure your jars are completely clean and sterilized before using them. Depending on the size of your carrots, you may need more or less to fill the jars.
Quick pickles don't develop the deep flavor that fermented pickles do, but they also only require a few days in the brine before they can be enjoyed. Quick pickles also do not require canning when refrigerated.
Vinegar pickling (or quick pickling) is a simple process. Water, salt and vinegar (and sometimes sugar) are combined and heated and then fruit or vegetables are immersed in that liquid.
The classic ratio is super easy to remember and is easily scale-able depending on how many pickles you're making. It's 100% vinegar, 50% water, 25% sugar and 12.5% kosher salt by weight. So for example, 200g vinegar, 100g water, 50g sugar and 25g kosher salt (again, you can scale this up or down!).
The technique—a version of vinegar pickling that doesn't require a full canning process—produces briny, crunchy pickled vegetables in just a couple hours. Heat the brine until sugar and salt dissolve, then pour it over the vegetables and let them cool in the jar—voila, pickles.
Using too weak a salt brine or vinegar solution may cause soft or slippery pickles, as can using moldy garlic or storing the pickles at too warm a temperature.
Pickling doesn't have to be a long process involving canning and special supplies. If you have vegetables that would be good pickled, like onions, garlic, carrots or green beans, toss them in the jar of leftover pickle juice, and see what happens. They'll make a nice addition to a charcuterie platter or Blood Mary.
Pickling: Full of good bacteria called Probiotics that aid in digestion and help our bodies break down and absorb all of carrots and daikon's wonderful nutrients! Healthy gut bacteria can even reduce the symptoms of depression and anxiety while protecting our microbiome and supporting of new growth!
"Pickles are about vinegar and salt, not sweetness," says Perry. Yes, you should have some sugar, but be wary of recipes that call for more than a ¼ cup of sugar. Your brine should lean salty, not syrupy. If you just use vinegar in your brine, it will be way too sharp, warns Perry.
While quick pickles do have some of the blood sugar and healthy gut benefits of regular pickles, they don't undergo the full fermentation process to form lactic acid, and so they have fewer of the probiotics.
But can you use any vinegar for pickling? Well, some vinegars are better for pickling than others. Try to avoid using concentrated or aged vinegars that may have too heavy a viscosity or too weak an acidity to prevent bacterial growth.
Because apple cider vinegar is made from apples rather than barley, corn rice or wine, it gives pickles a mellower taste. Using a white distilled vinegar, for example, will create a harsher flavour. But as well as being gentler on your palate, using apple cider vinegar also adds health benefits to pickles.
Then there is the quick-pickle — the kind of pickle that's ready in less than 24 hours, and sometimes in only minutes. One way to speed up the process is to eliminate the water component in the brine. That way, acid is in direct contact with the ingredient so pickling is nearly instantaneous.
The 'cPickle' module is a faster version of 'Pickle' that is written in C. This makes it faster than the 'Pickle' library that is implemented purely in Python.
Top the cucumbers with a few stacked lids or a resealable plastic bag filled with extra brine to keep them submerged. Place the airlock on top and secure it to the jar with the band. Store in a cool area (between 60 and 75F [15 and 24C]) for 3 to 5 days, or until the cucumbers taste like pickles.
Introduction: My name is Lakeisha Bayer VM, I am a brainy, kind, enchanting, healthy, lovely, clean, witty person who loves writing and wants to share my knowledge and understanding with you.
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