Quick Pickled Zucchini
You want know what time of the season it is?
Zucchini and squash time.
You want to know what's going to happen in a week or two?
Your fridge is going to become overwhelmed with zucchini and squash to the point where you can't roast or grill it anymore. Slathering hummus on it won't help either.
So do this:
One of our first zucchini squash was a big doozy, so I decided to snag it, harvest some of the squash blossoms, and take some split turnips to turn things up a little. Still keeping it pretty subtle, pretty simple.
"Quick" in the title doesn't mean quick as in "this is going to pickle in a day". "Quick" means it takes about 1 minute to chop this all up, another minute to arrange everything in a jar, and one last final minute to pour some salt water on it.
A big excuse people have to pickling is that they just don't have the time. Ok, sure. BUT you could take three minutes out of your extremely packed day to save that zucchini before it goes bad in your fridge and give your micro biome some good lovin' in a few weeks.
So chop up your zucchini and any other vegetable you want to add to your pickle in any desirable size (mandoline slice if you want your slices really thin) and just stack it all in a jar! One big zucchini filled up two quart jars for me!
So pickling things is not a huge dent in your wallet, really there's barely a dent that's made. You can find glass or ceramic jars anywhere for a buck or two (peruse around some good thrift stores!), you have your veggies already, so last but not least you need your salt. Not totally necessary, but why not just up the ante and invest in some good mineral sea salt?? Make that pickle the best pickle it could be!
So for these pickles, I just made a quick salt water brine, which really is what it sounds like. Salt and water mixed together and poured on your veggies.
For these pickles, I did 1 teaspoon of sea salt that I dissolved in enough water to fill one jar.
And that's it! Now just make sure that the brine level reaches the last veggie in your jar, so everything is pickling and submerged in the brine. The final thing to do is check up on your pickles every day or two, give it a little push in the brine, and in a week or two you should have some zucchini pickles! You can also just store away the jars in a nice cool place to slow down the pickling process (or store it in your fridge) once your zucchini has reached a pickled stage to your liking (the longer it's out in a warmer area fermenting, the stronger the ferment will get).
This pickle also gives you a nice chance to break away from that zucchini, turn down your oven and grill, and give yourself some time to miss it. Pop open a jar in a month or two once you're ready to zucchini it again.
And now we wait.....