Garbage Pickles

Submitted by Weewah

"Pickled radishes. Once you have these, you will crave them. We call them garbage pickles because of the smell; but you won't care how they smell once you taste them -and they don't taste like radishes! I made these on a lark one day and always keep some in the fridge. My kids love them and they are a great low-calorie snack too."

 

• Ready In: 15mins
• Ingredients: 3
• Serves: 5

ingredients

• fresh red radish, by the bag
• 5-10 garlic cloves

• Grandma Jennings all-purpose pickle brine

• 946.0 ml water, 1/4 C. vinegar, 1/4 C. pickling salt

directions

1. Trim both ends of each radish and cut them into quarters. (If you leave the radishes whole you won't be able to pack the radishes in tightly and there will be too much room for brine in the jar. The pickles would then be far too salty).
2. Pack the radishes as tightly as you can into a jar, spacing the garlic cloves evenly around. I recommend using a small-mouth pint jar, but a bag of radishes is not made to fit exactly into a jar of a particular size, so use your judgement on how many bags of radishes and jars you want to use. Cover the radishes with brine and cap the jar. Turn it upside down and place it in the fridge for 3 weeks to pickle. You will notice that very quickly the vinegar starts to break down the red skin on the radishes, making the pickle juice and the radishes each uniformly pink.
3. About that brine recipe. I make mine with a gallon of water, 1 cup salt and 1 cup vinegar as my Grandma taught me, but have cut the measurements down for folks who may not use so much. I keep this brine in a gallon jar and whenever I have something around that might be good to pickle (green tomatoes, string-beans, baby carrots, cauliflower ect.) I just grab a jar, pack it with veggies and seasoning (garlic, dill, curry, italian seasonings etc.) and pour on the brine. I always have some very good pickles in my fridge! Makes a good gift as well, if you seal them.

Reviews

[mandabears]

Easy to make and delicious. Stinky yes, but the taste and crunch of the radish pickles is well worth the fragrance.

 

[Muffin Goddess]

I'm a huge fan of just about anything pickled, so I knew I would like these. I had some fresh dill to use up, so I distributed a bunch of the sprigs with the radishes and garlic. They're salty, but I didn't find them to be any more salty than other homemade pickles I've tasted. I didn't find that they had a garbage-y smell to them, either -- just smelled like homemade garlic dill pickles to me! I'm sure I'll be making these again, since I typically have radishes floating around in the crisper drawer. Thanks for posting! Made for PAC Spring 2014

 

[lmachalek]

I have a couple of jars of these pickling in the fridge as I type this. They've been in there for a week now. I'm very excited to try them!!! I will update the rating and review once they're done!