Anger Burger

I’ve had to recently tell myself to stop making recipes for Anger Burger that are just recaps of other prominent bloggers, but then my mom was all “Dude, Smitten Kitchen’s bread and butter pickles,” and I was all — okay, she didn’t call me dude — and I was all “I know, right?!”  So we made them.

First hurdle: I just came from Southern California where there are buckets of free cucumbers just sitting along the sides of the roads¹.  In Washington state the canning cukes still aren’t ripe, which means the farmer’s markets won’t carry any because god forbid a cucumber come west of the mountains and have the carbon footprint of Fiji Water or whatever.

The second hurdle was my old friend Fiddle-Dee: I started tweaking SK’s recipe before I was even halfway through it.  Hers calls for a pound of cucumbers, which, after putting into a sack, seemed like hardly any at all, certainly not enough for my mother, myself and the jar I’d planned on giving to my friends Sean and Junko in thanks for their never-ending hospitality.    So I doubled it.

This recipe isn’t true canning, by the way, so don’t worry about what is MY SECRET SHAME: I’ve never canned anything.  It seems like a tremendous hurdle to me.  For a long time I was afraid of it (botulism!) and then more recently it just seems unnecessary (uh, I have no pantry), and then most recently of all, I realized that it is possible to just can one or two jars of something at a time.  Anyway, blahdeeblah, this is not that time: quick pickles merely require the cooking of a marinating syrup and some time and maybe a nice jar but even that isn’t important.  The pickles wilt down and “pickle” in a horrifying shitstorm of salt for two hours on the counter and if you’re a fool then you’ll taste one and have your head turn inside out.  Trust me.  I’m lucky my mother was a nurse.

Oh yeah, and the other hurdle was that I went to the crazy spice lady in Olympia and asked her for a few spoonfuls of mustard seed and she asked, “What color?”  So I asked, “Which is good for pickles?”  To which she answered “All of them.  Brown is the cheapest.”  So I said, “Brown it is then.”  And then I got home and my mom said, “You were supposed to get yellow.”

Take of that information what you will.

Then they go live in the fridge for at least 24 hours before eating.  And again — you may try tasting them after just a minute or a few minutes or an hour later, and each time you will be freshly heartbroken at how they don’t taste right.  Eventually you will come to know two things: the salt takes about 24 hours to leech back out of the pickles, so quit it with the early tasting (and when SK says they “begin tasting pickled in just a couple of hours,” the emphasis here is on the word begin) and that sugar levels are a very subjective thing.  SK advised cutting the sugar down even more than what she did, so I followed her advice and both my mom and I found the pickles to be not sweet enough.  Wah-waaah.  I think they’re okay but borderline, my mom definitely wanted more sugar.  Then again, she’s on chemo and sometimes thinks the air tastes funny, so maybe we shouldn’t listen to her.

Anger Burger’s Smitten Kitchen’s The Dispatch Kitchen’s Bread and Butter Pickles
i tried to describe bread and butter pickles to Junko (who rightfully was all, uh, WTF is a ‘bread and butter’ pickle?) and all I can say is: they’re a little sweet and a little salty and do not have sweet spices like clove or cinnamon, and instead are savory, oniony and frankly sort of Japanese.  my mom was also sad that we didn’t think to put pimentos or red bell peppers in them, which add another flavor dimension, so my recipe adaptation reflects that.

2 lbs. pickling cucumbers (often called Kirbys)
2 large yellow onions, sliced thin
1/2 cup Diamond Kosher salt specifically (LISTEN TO SMITTEN KITCHEN ABOUT WHY)
1 1/2 cups sugar
1 1/2 cups distilled white vinegar
1/2 tsp. ground turmeric
1 Tbsp. plus 1 tsp. yellow mustard seeds
2 Tbsps. whole coriander seeds
1/2 tsp. celery seed
1 large jar diced pimentos, drained, or 1 fresh red bell pepper peeled and diced small

• In a big bowl, layer the cucumbers, onions and salt.  Toss together with your hands to combine.  Reflect on how rad it is that you have a hangnail that now has salt crammed under it. Cover the surface of the veggies with ice cubes and set aside the whole bowl on a counter for two hours.

• In a big pot, bring the vinegar, sugar and spices to a simmer.  While it is getting there, drain the cukes well but do not rinse clean.  Dump into vinegar pot along with the pimentos or peppers and at high heat bring everything back up to steaming hot.  The vinegar will barely get to a boil after about 5 or 7 minutes, but at soon as everything seems real hot, remove from heat.

• While still warm, decant into jars or other glass container, evenly distributing the vegetables and covering with the pickling juice.  Allow to cool at a little at room temperature (until just warm to the touch) and then refrigerate.

• You can sneak tastes, but don’t judge until at least 24 hours and ideally 48.  Will last a few weeks in the fridge, but don’t experiment; just eat them.

¹ This is not true.