A simple pickle recipe that's great for pickling broccoli, cauliflower, radishes, onions, cucumbers, and more!
I love cookbooks and I hoard them pretty obsessively. Although, I’ll admit, I have a hard time following recipes from start to finish. Which is why I love the premise of Kate Payne’s new book, The Hip Girls Guide to the Kitchen. It’s a “hit the ground running approach, seeing as you need to eat three times daily whether you’ve mastered your kitchen or not.”
It’s full of, really, everything you need to know to be pretty successful in your kitchen – from how to set up your pantry to how to put meals together intuitively and economically. (Also she’s gluten free, so she includes tons of dietary options). She offers suggestions for what to buy in bulk, (and what not to), tips for buying kitchen tools from second hand stores, plus tons of clever “hip tricks” along the way. (For example: did you know you can buy a refurbished Vitamix blender for a fraction of the cost? …me neither).
She’s truly your friend in the kitchen and her writing is charming, witty, and just fun to read. Some of my favorite sections are:
Equip your Ship: Setting up your kitchen without winning the lottery
Methodology & Madd Skills: Learning how to cook without books or your laptop
Kitchen Kick-Ass: Tapping into your inner depression-era granny
Using Stuff Up: Preserving projects any beginner can handle
Since I’m clearly a beginner at preserving projects, I instantly gravitated to her recipe for Any Vegetable Vinegar Pickles. Any recipe that has “any vegetable” in the title, is my kind of recipe. I chose cauliflower, broccoli, red onions, radishes, and cucumbers along with a few various spices. Her brine recipe was quick and easy to make. The hardest part is the waiting – she suggest stashing them in the back of your fridge and not touching them for at least a week, although she says 2-3 is the best. (We’ll see if I can hold out that long!)
Click here to go buy her book!
Also, be sure to check out Kate’s blog, as well as these fine fellow bloggers who have also written posts about the book: Food in Jars, Healthy Green Kitchen, Local Kitchen Blog, Autumn Makes and Does, Punk Domestics, Spinach Tiger, and Local Savour.
the giveaway is now closed, a winner has been notified
any vegetable vinegar pickles
- any vegetables you like (I used cucumbers, broccoli, cauliflower, onions and radishes)
- fresh or dried spices (I used peppercorns, cumin, coriander, mustard seeds, & caraway)
- 1 cup any kind of vinegar (I used white wine vinegar)
- 1 cup filtered water
- 1 tablespoon kosher or any non-iodized salt
- optional: 1 teaspoon sugar
- Wash and cut up your vegetables and pack them into a clean jar.
- Add between ¼ - ½ teaspoon of whole dried spices.
- Combine vinegar, filtered water and salt in a medium saucepan and bring to a boil.
- Put your just boiled brine over the vegetables in the jar.
- Wipe any vinegar spills from the rim with a clean towel and put on the lid.
- Hide the jar in the back of the friedge for at least a week. Two weeks is better, three is best.
- Keep them in the fridge for up to 6 months.
I used these Ball jars (and also the smaller version).
recipe published with permission from Harper Collins.
I need some tips, which is why this book would be great. My new favorite is subbing plain greek yogurt for any kind of cream cheese, sour cream, mayo ect. needs. It’s really good on salads, too.
I always make extras of each meal and freeze them for easy meals in the future!
I love pickles! I’m going to have to try this in the fall when I get back to school. My favorite kitchen tip: every single chef or cook or blogger who ever wrote a recipe started with just experimenting. So everyone is perfectly qualified to start playing around with recipes, making their own dressings and spice mixes. That and putting a rubber band around the unopenable jar helps you get the lid off! 🙂
This is exactly the post I’ve been looking for! I made some 24 hour fridge pickles the other day, they turned out pretty good, but I’m going to give this recipe a try now!
First of all, I LOVE your site! My best tip is: substitute! Some of my favorite recipes are way too calorie dense but with substitutions they are back in my repertoire. Some substitutions I use all the time are: 0% plain greek yoghurt for sour cream and mayo, unsweetened applesauce for oil (in baking), maple syrup for any sweetener, and nutritional yeast for parmesan (or other hard cheeses).
My best kitchen tip is to cook ahead. I always make a double batch and stash stuff in the freezer. So grateful on a busy night for that extra effort.
after cutting onions when washing your hands just rub your fingers on your stainless steel sink and it will remove the smell.
these look delicious! it sounds like an awesome book! when i cook new recipes i try to get all my prep work done the night before, or earlier in the day–not so daunting that way! also, storing sweets on the top shelf and out of sight 🙂
Always keep your favorite simple basics on hand in case you get home late or don’t feel like cooking a big meal. I like to have chopped veggies (chopped and washed ahead of time), brown rice tortillas, avocados and veggie burgers available at all times. Super simple to prepare a fast, delicious meal!
Make your own soups to keep sodium levels in check. They taste more flavorful too! If short on time, make large batches and freeze in individual portions for a quick and easy meal. Also, never fill the soup to the top when you freeze — leave a little room for expansion.
Read your recipe the night before. The next day organize your ingredients as per recipe instructions and you’re ready to go!
My tip is to do as much as possible early in the day and reheat or finish just before mealtime. Restaurants do this all the time and it makes sense if you are home during the day or an early riser.
I always make sure that I make enough food to have plenty of leftovers. I have so much fun coming up with new meals to make with my leftovers and it is really quick because most of it is already cooked. One of my favorites is making a bunch of sweet potato fries and adding the leftovers to all kinds of dishes, like salads, tacos, and scrambled eggs!
I hoard cookbooks too … Favorite tip echoes another, mis en place. Makes preparation so much easier with fewer emergency grocery store runs. Would love the book, farmers markets are bursting with georgeous produce to try.
We love almost anything in taco form, and recently we started to use our pancake griddle to brown corn tortillas and melt the cheese for tacos! It’s great to have all the tortillas browned to perfection and done at the same time, rather than trying to squeeze too many into a skillet.
I make a big batch of granola that lasts a couple weeks and uses up all the leftover nuts and seeds in a timely manner!
I love the concept of this book! Because I am typically cooking for myself and maybe one other person, I tend to make meals that are far too large and could feed 8-12 people. Instead of feeding my neighbors every day, I divide my leftovers into individual portions and freeze them, essentially making my own TV dinners.
Favorite tip is “kinda” a food related one: If you use a banana peel to rub onto a bug bite, it will stop it from itching.
yum! this is an awesome idea – perfect for the summer and for house gifts! my kitchen tip is to always have a small stock of the staples on hand… in my house this is quinoa, a can of chickpeas or beans, and jarred tomatoes. it’s amazing what you can do with a few extra fresh ingredients and these staples.
This looks like a great book!
My kitchen tip is to use a silicone brownie squares baking mold for freezing leftover tomato paste and leftover herbs with water. I also used it for freezing baby food for my son. In fact, I have never used the mold for baking, just for freezing, and everything pops right out without any effort or problems.