It’s asparagus season and bunches of them keep appearing in our fridge. I could eat the spears with butter three meals a day but I managed to save a bunch for pickling after a friend’s recommendation. The recipe I used is simple:
Ingredients:
-1 bunch of asparagus
-1 or more carrots to fill jar
-4 radishes
-4 cloves garlic
-1 teaspoon coriander seeds
-1 teaspoon black peppercorns
-2 cups water mixed with 1.5 tablespoons salt
-1 wide-mouth, 1-quart mason jar
Note: you can substitute a second bunch of asparagus for the carrots and radishes, depending on space in your jar
Directions:
Wash the veggies. Snap off the woody bottoms of the asparagus and see how they fit into the jar, heads down. If they stick out from the mouth of the jar, cut more off the bottom until they do. You can toss these bits into the jar or compost them. Cut each carrot lengthwise and then cut each half lengthwise again. Cut each of these four carrot lengths in half. Cut the radishes into quarters. Slice the garlic cloves thinly. Add the carrots, garlic and radishes to the jar and spoon in the spices. Pour the thoroughly-mixed salt water into the jar. The water should cover the vegetables completely. If they don’t, you can either add more veggies or more salt water. I put in the carrot and the radishes because I still had space. If you prefer, start with two bunches of asparagus and forgo the root vegetables.
Here they are in the jar:
To seal them from the air (which keeps them from molding and allows fermentation to occur), I used a different method than I described in my post on how to pickle anything. I took a smaller jar filled with water and placed it into the mouth of the one-quart jar like this:
Cover the top with a towel to keep out dust and then put the jar in your cabinet. You might want to put a towel under it, too, in case the carbon dioxide released during fermentation makes some brine bubble over. After a week or two, they should be ready.
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