Pickled Green Tomatoes & The Butcher and the Vegetarian
This year’s tomato track record isn’t all that bad yet and we’re immediately jumping on the pickling band-wagon. The current tomato plant count is 4 out of 20 died due to disease, which is much less than what we suffered last year. In 2009, the whole nation suffered a tomato crisis where a late blight hammered many crops and home gardens.
Some tomatoes are more disease resistant than others, so with fingers tightly crossed, were thinking that the dead plants were the weaker varieties.
Too many green tomatoes to count!
Pickled Green Tomatoes Recipe
Still, all the little green tomato globes hanging on the vines are examples of mother nature at her best. Different shapes, shades and sizes of green tomatoes are popping up everywhere and we can’t keep up with the count. If all goes well, these tomato babies will be plump, red , sweet, juicy and ripe in a month or so!
Again, our fingers are tightly crossed for a bumper tomato crop. The wait for the clusters to change hue is always rewarding because every day, they change a little bit in color, size and shape. Yes, we stalk our tomatoes every morning, like every good gardener should. 😉
The vines that did start to die back didn’t all go to waste. After treating the plants with organic neem oil and clipping back the weaker branches, some survived their initial scare and we were able to gather the green tomatoes and pickle them using Tara’s basic brine recipe.
Tara Weaver, writer of the lovely blog Tea and Cookies, had an easy and perfect basic pickling brine that can be customized in all sorts of directions. She suggested a sweet and sour option, which would be a refreshing take on our standard salty-sour brine. Like she says, play with your pickling brine and have fun.
If you’re a lover of great writing, then you probably are already reading Tara on her scrumptious blog. If you aren’t reading Tara yet, then you’ll be treated to her gorgeous prose. It’s a brilliant collection of essays that instantly transport you along in her food travels. Everything that Tara produces is a must-read. Her writing is an escape to a better place when you’re in need of something funny and uplifting.
Her award winning writing is like chatting with a good friend. Tara’s visual, comforting posts, candor and raw honesty are real and genuine.
Tara’s newest book, The Butcher and the Vegetarian, is a lovely example of why this woman has so much talent in every single one of her writing digits. We were immediately connected to this book because the premise of the book was a mirror image of us. When we first met, I was a vegetarian and Todd was all about the meat (he grew up on a cattle ranch).
While I was feasting on grilled tofu, he was gnawing on his favorite t-bone. He’s forever my cowboy.
This fun, funny, intelligent and thought provoking book about food and life says it all in the title: “One Woman’s Romp through a World of Men, Meat and Moral Crisis”. One would think that Tara’s book is a chick-flick on paper, a girl’s romantic Cinderella story about being swept away by an opposite, a knife wielding butcher.
But her book is so deep in her personal journey about eating meat for health reasons and she goes knee deep into the whole business and politics of meat. The culture of meat and its place in our current food chain are just few of the topics she touches on in some eye-opening chapters.
This book needs to be made into a movie and it’s so good that we won’t be surprised that it will one day. Grab a copy and read it now before our predictions come true.
Happy Summer & Green Tomatoes to you all!
-diane
Pickled Green Tomatoes Recipe
Ingredients
- 3 pounds small, green tomatoes (washed, stems removed)
- 2 quarts water
- 1 cup white vinegar
- 1/2 cup canning & pickling salt (can use sea salt or kosher salt, just make sure it fully dissolves)
- 2 teaspoons celery salt
- 2 cloves minced garlic
- chili flakes (optional for a little heat!)
- glass containers for pickling
Instructions
- In a large enough saucepan, add water, vinegar, kosher/sea salt bring to a strong simmer, stirring until the salt has all dissolved.
- Sterilize your glass containers by submerging them in a pot of boiling water.
- Place tomatoes in glass containers and add hot bring until the tomatoes are completely covers.
- Allow the bring in the jars to cool, then cover and put in fridge. You’ll want to wait a few days for the to flavor develop before eating.
- The tomatoes can keep in the fridge for a few months, as long as no mold, scum, spoiling occurs. Check the jars regularly.
Wonderful photos – my plants got in only two weeks ago here!
🙂
Valerie
Howdy. Logistical question: when you say the tomatoes will keep in the fridge for a few months, are you referring to open jars, unopened or both? I haven’t yet delved into pickling, but my grandparents always send me several jars through out the summer and we store them in the cupboard until opening. Does it depend on the brine used? Thanks for your help (and beautiful photos)!
I love pickles and tomatoes. The pickled green tomato is fantastic – your photos are awesome. What kind of lens do you use on these?
Tomatoes are a very favorite food item of mine – especially nice, ripe late summer tomatoes. Those juicy, full-of-flavor ones. Yum. Pickling green ones is a nice option too. Thanks for the intro to Tara’s blog.
Nice to know about this book. You make me want to purchase and read right now. When I met my husband I was also a vegetarian and he was such a good sport about it. I returned to meat, but not unenlightened. I still focus heavily on eating produce, mainly because I feel better. Thus the name..spinach tiger.
Your tomatoes look lovely. A neighbor made the thomas keller tomato marmalade recently, a recipe I never would have thought appealing, until I tasted it. Then I couldn’t get it off my mind, so that might be a suggestion when your plants are running over.
So many of your posts take me back…to those days of being younger, married and growing amazing gardens. Now none of those apply and maybe it’s the tomatoes I miss the most!
My youngest graduated from college in the past year so although ‘officially’ still living at home while in pursuit of a full time job, I’m basically the only one here on a regular basis so the size of my garden diminishes each year.
Last year, I decided to forego the expense of watering any crops in my raised beds and turned them over to some more perennials and put tomatoes, basil and rosemary in pots. I was a bit disappointed when I saw few green tomatoes, much less any that would ever seem to get to a point of ripening.
Then one day discovered why. Was it squirrels or birds or bunnies? Nope. It was my dog! I spied her standing at the pot with her front legs on the rim…grabbing at the few green little tomatoes left. Funny enough I couldn’t get mad and for me, a moment when I decided my time of raising my own was over!
I’m so jealous to see these green tomatoes. I have to hunt around for these ones to complete my sambal lado (green chilies sambal)
I have never had a pickled tomato, but they sound quite splendid!
Just love green tomatoes. In Autumn in Niseko we take all the green tomatoes and make a delicious pickle we use year round to go with charcuterie plates as well as a green tomato chutney that can be used on sandwiches. Yum, yum !!
Aren’t pickled tomatoes the best thing? I usually make them in autumn when frost is imminent and we still have loads of green tomatoes on the vines. Michael will eat them straight from the jar, but they are also good chopped and used as relish. I hope all your tomato plants survive and you get lots of tomatoes this year. 🙂
Great idea! I don’t have a tomato garden, but we had an avalanche of green tomatoes from the farmers’ market lately. I just ignored them. Will probably try this.
This sounds amazing. But where does the sweetness come from?
Half Assed Kitchen- the sweetness would come from adding more sugar to your brine.
I love pickled green tomatoes. Ours are only thinking about blooming at this time, and all the rain has me worried about the blight again this year too. So far so good…but it’s early here in the midwest. I go for the Bread and Butter style…sweet sour.
Love the pictures, as always!
I just got a recipe from my husband’s grandparents last night that requires green tomatoes, so I will be putting that together this week. I asked a few vendors at the farmer’s market today whether they thought they might have some to bring next week, but they said no. So, I will use some from my plants, as you have done.
I just finished off the pickled carrots I made using your recipe, so I will have to make some more of them soon. 🙂
I love pickles of all sorts. These must be fabulous!
Pickled green tomatoes just sound delicious!