Quick Pickled Vegetables

These Quick Pickled Vegetables are exactly what you need if you love pickles, but feel they just take too long. All you need to do is briefly heat the mix of water, vinegar, sugar and salt, pour it over your vegetables of choice and you are done. You can use them on anything from Banh Mi Buns to Ramen within just 1h or have them in the fridge for 2 weeks as super quick snack or topping for anything your pickle loving heart desires.

 

This post may contain referral links for products I love. For The Pleasure Of Eating earns a small commission on these links at no cost to you, and the links will always be marked with an asterisk* or highlighted in pink.

• Why You Will Love This
• The Ingredients
• How to Make This
• Meal Prep

Why You Will Love This 

TL;DR

Vinegar, salt, water and sugar make a super quick and easy pickling liquid that you can vary endlessly to your taste. No boiling and sealng of jars required. Plus you can start eating them hours later and then for over a week after.

Versatile

Apart from the fact that I’ll be using these as both Pork Banh Mi Bun and Black Garlic Pork Ramen topping for the recipes, these Quick Pickled Vegetables are endlessly versatile. You can add chili, if you enjoy them on the spicy side (I don’t, so I left it out), add herbs like dill or cilantro, depending on the flavour direction you want to go. Add honey for a delicious twist, maybe some mustard seeds with it, for a honey mustard version. Or more Asian spices. Possible some soy sauce even.
I’m giving you the very basic canvas recipe here, as that’s what goes into Banh Mi Buns. Which was my reason for making them in the first place.

Use a Wide Variety of Vegetables

Vegetable wise, there are virtually no limits and chances are, you won’t find most of them pickled in the supermarket. I love carrots, mini sweetcorn, cucumber, radishes, and red cabbage. But you could also use Zucchini, pumpkin, white cabbage of course or beetroot. Since the basic process is so easy and ingredients just your very standard pantry contents, you can wildly experiment and adapt them to your preferences.

I aim to add at least 5 different plants to every one of my main meals, which is how I lost 70lb within a year. These pickled veggies were a big help in it, as they just make everything taste more exciting.

Flavor Variation

I’ve made rather delicious Honey-Mustard cucumbers with dill here as variation, by simply adding honey to sweeten, mustard seeds and fresh dill. Some peppercorns for a bit of heat.

Super Easy and Quick

I always thought of pickling as a bit of an undertaking, remembering my mom standing in the kitchen all day with boiling jars and using some special pot, filling countless jars that then were deposited in the cellar. Just to come out rather lackluster looking after years of waiting for their turn to be eaten.

This quick pickled version is very different. You make smaller portions and don’t cook the veggies, which keeps them super crunchy and fresh. The pickling liquid is simply poured over them in their jar and then left for a day or so, to do its job of infusing them with the most delicious sweet-sour tang.

Fantastic for Meal Prep

Because they are so quick and versatile, I include some sort of quick pickled vegetable nearly every week in my meal prep. They are fantastic for snacking, but also in all sorts of dished from salad over sandwhich to soups like ramen.

You can keep the jars for about 2 weeks, so you could make different varieties to last you longer.

The Ingredients

• Vegetables – I have used red cabbage, cucumber, carrots, mini sweetcorn and radishes (that turn a super pretty pink when pickling). Small onions are great too and you could even try green beans, even whole jalapenos, beets, asparagus, squash, mushrooms, parsnips, peppers or turnips.
  Even a range of fruit like any stone fruit or strawberries work remarkably well.
• Vinegar – I’ve used both plain white vinegar and rice vinegar with good results for this. I would generally say use something that doesn’t interfere with the colour too much, so you can see what you are pickling in the jar. But if you want to splurge and try Balsamic for example, please let me know how that turns out.
• Sweetener – both white sugar and honey work really well. You will need one of them, or your pickles will mostly likely lead to a rather violent coughing fit. You are going for the perfect balance of sweet, sour and salty here. If you want to vary it, try maple syrup.
• Salt – I’m using kosher salt here, hence 4 tsp. If you are using sea salt, use half the amount.
• Water – This is a pretty important ingredient. You don’t want pure vinegar over your veggies. You can experiment with the ratio, as it will influence the final flavour. I quite like 3 cups vinegar to 4 cups water, for a really zingy and fresh flavour.

Note:

If you only make one or two different vegetables, use half the amount of ingredients. My portion was just right for 5 different ones in their containers.

Equipment Used

chopping board

Buy Now →

knife

Buy Now →

measuring jug

Buy Now →

Kilner jars

Buy Now →

*

How to Make this

Prepare your Vegetables

Depending on what vegetables you are using to pickle and what you want to use them for, slice, julienne or leave them whole (baby sweetcorn for example can go in whole).
I’ve julienned my carrots, thinly sliced my cucumbers for the Banh Mi Buns lengthwise, sliced radishes and thinly shredded the red cabbage.

For the Honey Mustard variety, I’ve chopped my cucumbers into larger sticks.

Add them to pickling jars* or glass containers with lids*. Depending on the below hot or cold method you are using, make sure they are heat proof. I tend to put mine in the sink when adding the hot liquid, just in case one decides to crack, even though mine state to be heat proof.

The Pickling

You can go two ways here: Just stir the ingredients together cold, until the sugar has dissolved. Then pour over the veggies in your jars. The stirring takes a bit longer and they may need overnight, to get that delicious tang.

Or heat the vinegar with the remaining ingredients until the sugar has dissolved. Just boil very briefly. Let it cool down for a little, to not endanger your jars, then pour over. I always feel heating is a little safer, as we want to keep the vegetables for about 1 week or longer. So, I’m using the hob method.

Meal Prep

I absolutely love making Quick Pickled Vegetables for all sorts of dishes, as they only get better with time. They are fantastic to have on hand as snacks (Girl Dinner anyone?), as topping for Buddha Bowls, Ramen, Sandwiches of all sorts, Burgers…you name it.
I tend to have at least 2 jars of different varieties on hand at all times, in case a pickle craving hits me. Which happens a lot.

I have used These Quick Pickled Vegetables in many dishes. Here are some of them:

Now I’d love to hear from you in the comments!

Have you tried this? Did you enjoy it?
What other recipes would you like to see?

If you enjoyed this recipe, please share. It helps me a lot.

Print