Dear readers, I apologize for not having brought this recipe to your attention before. One of goals of this blog is share healthy and tasty recipes that elevate your daily cooking. Pikliz does exactly that – it adds a zingy, spicy, crunchy texture on top of fried foods (such as falafel), rice and sandwiches. It is a painless way of adding a few more vegetables to almost any dish, which is alwas a good thing. I also love dill pickles and Korean kimchi, but I find that pikliz is on a whole other level.
Ingredients:
- A decent size Mason or a recycled and santized jar from the supermarket (I actually use recycled Dill Pickle jars)
- Thinly sliced or grated cabbage ** If you grate instead of slice, you are looking to use the larger grater blades that give you you long thin slices and don’t “crush” the vegetables. Also, I’ve used cabbages of all colors for pikliz – they all work well. What’s important is the crunch and texture.
- 1 or 2 large carrots, peeled and thinly sliced or grated.
- A lesser amount of bell pepper, seeded and thinly sliced (for added color and texture) *** Pro tip/cheat code – if you can find bags of presliced or grated cabbage, carrots, peppers and celery (meant for salads)in your local supermarket, by all means use this . If you make as much pikliz as I do, it’s a timesaver..
- 1 decent sized onion, thinly sliced (do not grate this)
- 1 spring onion, thinly sliced (including the green stalk part).
- 2 to 4 Habanero chiles, cut in half and seeded ** (the Habanero imparts the zingy spice notes so I cut it in half to allow it to do so. Some people cut it thinly which means you’ll eat the pickled Habenero as well. Generally speaking, I love lots of spice, but in my opinion the that is not the raison d’etre of pikliz.)
- A few garlic cloves, finely chopped
- Kosher salt or larger grain sea salt
- A pinch of black peppercorns
- 3 good pungent cloves
- 2 to 3 cups of white vinegar ( I find the Heinz variety does the trick)
- Lime juice (extra points for key limes, but if not, any fresh lime juice will do)
Instructions:
This is a very basic method of pickling which means marinating the sliced vegetables in a salty vinegar acidic solution. This is a cold picking method but I know people who heat the liquids first with the cloves, peppercorns and salt and it works just a well. Ideally you should make pikliz at least 3 days before consuming it as this will allow the vinegar solution to meld all of the flavors as well as drive excess water from veggies.
Quantities – I have shied away from citing exact quantities because it really depends on how much pikliz you want to make and how big a jar you are using. Suffice it to say that the cabbage, carrot, onion and bell pepper make the backbone of this dish, and the other parts play a supporting role.
Add all of ingredients, save the salt, lime juice and vinegar to your pickling jar. Now add the salt (at least a few teaspoons, but it shouldn’t be overly salty either), the lime juice and the vinegar until all the veggies are covered by the liquid. Use a wooden spoon to mix everything together well. Use the remaining vinegar to “top it up” a bit more but the vegetables should just be covered by the solution, not swimming in it.
That’s it. Pikliz should last a month in the fridge, at the very least. In my house, we eat it quite a bit so it doesn’t last long enough for me to test it’s preservation properties. Enjoy.
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