Sweet and sour cucumber pickles for burger and sandwich: recipe

List of ingredients

and the aromatics:

Recipe

Summary of the recipe

The sliced ​​cucumbers are drained, then put in jars with herbs and covered with boiling sweet vinegar.

Choose very fresh cucumbers: straight from the garden (cucumber growing is easy and often very generous) or failing that, from the market, from a local producer if possible; it makes a difference in taste and crunch.

In addition, prefer cucumbers that are not too thick: it is better if they do not yet contain seeds.

Drain the cucumber

Wash the cucumbers then slice them into slices 2 to 4 mm thick

Put them in a colander

Sprinkle with coarse salt, without excess; this salt will make the cucumber disgorge.

We let these slices of cucumbers drain for 1 to 2 hours, their water drips under the colander. Be careful, they should not be left in the salt for more than 2 hours, because they lose too much water and will become unpleasantly dry in pickles.

The cucumber pieces are then rinsed under the tap to remove all salt residue. This is an essential step to avoid having too salty pickles.

Prepare condiments

Onions or chives are chopped.

The small pepper is deseeded and cut into small sections

Prepare 5 to 10 peppercorns per jar

Thoroughly clean the jars

For about 200 g of cucumber prepare 1 or 2 jars that close well (recovered from preserves or jam, with their lid not twisted). The jar and its lid must be perfectly clean: they have just come out of the dishwasher or even better, they are rinsed in boiling water, not completely sterilized, but almost.

Potting

In the bottom of the pot, put 1 to 2 cm of condiments, position the slices above, relatively rows to put as much as possible.

Feel free to add a little more onions, pepper and chilli in the middle, then fill up to 1.5 cm from the edge.

Prepare the sweet and sour vinegar and cover the future pickles with it

In a saucepan, heat the 250 g of vinegar with 50 g of sugar.

As soon as the sugar has melted and it’s boiling, pour over the cucumbers immediately, filling almost to the edge: no slice should protrude from the surface.

Close the jar immediately.

Tips for a successful recipe

Use the pickles

The cucumber pickles recipe is an excellent way to preserve surplus cucumbers from the vegetable garden: cucumbers, when they give, are generous!

This recipe is also dedicated to those who like to make their homemade burger. These sweet and sour cucumber pickles are tender and crunchy, spicy and very slightly spicy, if you add Espelette pepper: they are great for the burger, a sandwich, to spice up a salad, to decorate a charcuterie board or simply to bite into as an aperitif.

Best of all, this recipe is simple and easy!

Conservation

Preservation in vinegar is an ancestral method. Here, in this recipe for sweet and sour cucumber pickles, the conservation is done thanks to 3 combined factors:

• the lowest water content of the cucumber that has disgorged
• the acidity of vinegar
• the presence of sugar

Well-sealed jars of these cucumber pickles can be stored like gherkins, for more than a year away from light.

Once opened, like pickles, these pickles will be stored in the fridge, normally eaten within weeks, if possible. Although, even open the jar, as long as the pucks do not overflow the surface, not much happens.

Trick : you can make jars of different sizes to adapt the quantity of pickles to your consumption and according to the use you will make of them.

Obviously, there are many possible variations of this recipe.

The shape of cucumber pieces:

If the slice is perfectly suited to put in a hamburger, in a sandwich or on appetizer toast, cutting the cucumber into long sticks can be interesting for other uses, in fact the thicker pieces provide more crunch. For example :

• to serve as an aperitif
• in a salad or a bowl of vegetables, sticks are more practical to be cut into small cubes
• instead of pickles

The spices

The herbs can also vary: you can remove the pepper if you are too sensitive to it, or add many other flavors:

• there are different types of pepper, and some bring a particular flavor.
• fresh aromatic herbs: thyme, dill, tarragon…
• seeds: cumin, fennel, coriander…

The vinegar

We are using a white kitchen vinegar here, which reveals the color of the pickles better, but other vinegars, colored or less neutral, can be used, such as cider vinegar, for example.

Sugar

You can use white, brown, beet or cane sugar. You can even replace it with honey.

It is also possible to make cucumber pickles in vinegar and without sugar.

So, it’s up to you how you flavor your cucumber pickles. The basic recipe here is excellent. If you try variations, avoid changing too many parameters at once. Start by testing different herbs: it’s amazing how a simple fennel leaf in the jar subtly changes the taste of these pickles!

Thank you Vronique MACRELLE