You Must Pick and Pickle Green Strawberries
I hate picking strawberries. I love the berries themselves, and I romanticize picking them every year until I’m there, crouched on the ground, reminded of my age and prone to backaches as I aggressively turn the leaves in search of ripe berries. I was angry at the green, unripe berries—their cheekiness—until someone introduced me to pickled green strawberries.
Maybe you’re growing strawberries at home (you should; they’re perennial, so they’ll come back every year and breed like crazy with little maintenance), or maybe you prefer the U-pick situation. Either way, it’s as easy as picking clean, green strawberries, which are usually smaller, bringing them home and pickling them. On the positive side, once treated, they last a year or two, so you can pull them out in the middle of winter, one of my favorite tricks.
You can use pickled strawberries in a number of ways – it’s a brine so I like it on a cheese plate, especially paired with pickled fennel. I once saw them referred to as excellent vinaigrettes, but my brain read it as “mignonette” and it turned out my brain was on to something. Slice them along with the shallots and toss them into a raw oyster for a summery twist on an already summery meal.
I have made this Green Strawberry Gazpacho twice and each time I am delighted with how healthy it is considering how delicious it is. They are also good in a simple salad with frieze and goat cheese, but some cooks use them as a side dish for raw fish or as a seasoning for proteins. I haven’t tried it yet, but it looks like their sherbet is pretty amazing.
I would have followed Martha into the desert, but I changed her recipe by toning down the spices, replacing the champagne vinegar with white wine vinegar, and adding some honey. It’s not that she chose the wrong or bad spices, but I’d rather decide which spice to use when I know what strawberries are used for. (For example, I don’t want to overload the sorbet with mustard seeds.)
Pickled Green Strawberries
- 2 cups green strawberries, washed and stemmed
- 1 teaspoon peppercorns
- 1 bay leaf
- 1 teaspoon fennel seeds
- 3/4 cup apple cider vinegar
- 3/4 cup champagne vinegar
- 1 teaspoon honey
- 1 teaspoon non-iodized salt
- 1 teaspoon citric acid
Arrange the washed berries in four clean half-liter jars. Heat all other ingredients except citric acid in a saucepan. Let the mixture boil and remove from heat. Wait five minutes for the mixture to cool slightly. During this time, add ¼ teaspoon of citric acid to each jar. Now pour the vinegar mixture over the strawberries, filling each jar an inch below the top.
Cover the jar with a clean lid and ring and place the jar in a water bath. If you’ve never done this before, fill a saucepan with the hottest water you can halfway and line the bottom with a kitchen towel. Using canning tongs, dip the jars into the water. The water should cover the jars by a few inches. Leave jars in hot water to adjust to temperature for 10 minutes. Then turn on the heat under the saucepan, cover with a lid and bring to a boil.
Do this slowly, increasing the heat to medium for 10 minutes, then to medium-high for another 10, and finally to high so that the jars don’t experience heatstroke. Once you boil, let the saucepan continue to simmer for ten minutes, then turn off the heat, remove the saucepan from the stove and let the saucepan cool.
Remove the jars as soon as they are cool enough to handle and let them sit on the counter until they are completely cool. The lids should be pressed in and attached to the jars. If so, you can take the ring out of the jar and store it until you’re ready to use it, which could be tomorrow, depending on how often you like the cheese plate.