Hello there beautiful people, I hope you’re all doing well!

I’ve been experimenting with pickled vegetables for a few weeks now – I’ve been buying a lot of fruit and veg lately to make sure we still eat healthily (as much as possible at least) while we’re on un-official lock down. Sometimes I have extra veggies and I don’t know what to do with them – this tends to happen more than I’d like to admit. This isn’t always a bad thing though because I find that my fave recipes emerge when I’m trying to use up ‘extra’ food!

One of my new favourite things to do with extra veggies is to pickle them. It’s really easy and totally customize-able.

Here’s how I made my two new fave pickled veggies!

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Two things I always buy a lot of are onions and cucumber; I use both practically daily. I like using cucumber in salads, wraps, sandwiches and to make tzatziki (recipe here: https://holisticnutritionninja.com/2019/01/10/tasty-tzatziki/). Onions I use in pretty much everything and somehow still end up with extras in my pantry.

My fave way to use the pickled veg so far was on my vegan burgers – if you’d like to give the burgers a try, click the link here Vegan Burgers

I made two versions of pickled vegetables – one with onions and another with cucumber. There are many methods you can use to pickle vegetables; from fast pickling using boiling water to so many different combinations. These are just my faves that I’ve made over and over and absolutely love.

WHICH VINEGAR TO USE

I’d like to add a little note here before we get into the actual recipe about the vinegar used for pickled vegetables. Keep in mind that these have very few ingredients so it really is important to use a good quality vinegar here. My personal fave is REAL apple cider vinegar – the ones with sediment at the bottom that are naturally fermented. This is important as that is where the health benefits come from. Apple cider vinegar specifically helps improve gut health, improves digestion, lowers cholesterol, improves immunity and helps improve and stabilize blood sugar levels! I use Clearsprings Apple Cider Vinegar (pictured below)

Pickled Onions:

2 medium onions – sliced into rings

2 tablespoons sugar

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon chilli flakes

250ml water

50 ml apple cider vinegar

3 bay leaves

Method:

Simply peel and slice onions and add to a large jar, then add all the remaining ingredients. I normally like to bruise the bay leaves just to make sure they give off a lot of flavour and also use room temperature water.

Then just place jar in the fridge and start using after 3 to 4 days.

Pickled Cucumber:

1/2 a large cucumber – sliced

2 cloves garlic

100ml water

25ml apple cider vinegar

Method:

Simply slice cucumber into discs or strips and add to a large jar, then add all the remaining ingredients. I like to smash the garlic cloves again just to make sure they give off a lot of flavour and also use room temperature water.

Then just place jar in the fridge and start using after 3 to 4 days.

I really do hope you give these a try – it takes just a few minutes to put together and can be used for a really long time as the vinegar preserves the veggies and gives off even deeper flavour the longer you leave them!

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Until my next post, be well xXx