Our home grown chillies and pickles

Three weeks ago I put our chillies on a rack to dry out. This was the photo of them back then.

Chillies drying out on a rack

To my surprise they have changed colour. This is the photo of the chillies today.

Most of the chillies have gone red

I think they look quite beautiful. As they can be used as they are or ground to a powder I am going to leave them longer to see if they dry out some more.

An update on our pickles. The gherkins which we pickled in a mixture of brine and vinegar have turned out really well and are very similar to shop bought ones.

The runner beans have been a work in progress. I cheated and used pickling vinegar for them which can be used cold and so seemed a more simple method. When we tried them about three weeks later they were lovely and crunchy but so sour and acidic that we just couldn’t eat them.

I will never use pickling vinegar again. I googled and followed instructions for if your product is too sour. I drained off the vinegar and added quite a good amount of sugar and left it for a few days to dissolve. I then added it back to the beans and we tried them. They were still so sour that they were inedible.

Next I drained them again and poured over them the vinegar from a used jar of pickled onions. I thought that this would mean that the vinegar would be right.

The only thing is, that now, the beans taste just like pickled onions. They have the same crunch and with your eyes closed you wouldn’t know you were not eating a pickled onion.

Pickled beans mark three

It isn’t really what I would call a success as I am not sure of the benefit of beans that taste like pickled onions but I guess it has been a learning curve. Drying chillies and pickling are a first for us so it’s all experimental really.

I have learned a few lessons about vinegar and I think that is the part that we need to get right. It’s a shame about the beans as we have two jars of them and I think they will take a very long time for us to eat. There again there was such an abundance of beans that it wouldn’t really matter if we didn’t eat them

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4 Responses to Our home grown chillies and pickles

  1. david says:

    Certainly worth the try – just a pity not successful. We tend to eat beetroot and pickles in sweet vinegar, but I don’t know if you can buy it to do your own – it’s certainly far less acidic. I don’t know how long pickles in vinegar actually last, but my father has just finished the last jar of beetroot my mother pickled – and she died 3 and a half years ago!

    • Carol says:

      Being new to this and always going on the safe side I have kept our pickles in the fridge so they should keep fine. We tried the beans again today and they have improved since we last tried them. We are going to have a few each time we have salad or cheese.

  2. marion says:

    I find freezing chillies is the best, but good on you for trying all these things. Runner beans are my favorite veg, but i have tried all different ways to keep them, but have not found a way that i like them yet.

    • Carol says:

      It’s always worth trying something new but I agree with you that there is no way better to eat them than fresh. Getting used to pickled onion tasting beans is very odd to say the least.

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