Tomatoes: Pickled

Pickled Tomatoes

Ahh… Pickled tomatoes…  There’s nothing else like them.  When I think about them, I always remember winter-time family dinners, snow outside, grandpa grabbing a ladder and going into the cellar to get a bowl of pickled tomatoes.   You see, when I was little, my grandparents had a cellar, a place little girls were not allowed to go to, which of course, worked to capture the imagination nurtured on rich Russian fairy tales even more.  But the treasure in that cellar was a barrel of pickled tomatoes.  Of course, there was also a barrel of pickles.  At the rate I ate them, there were probably several dozen barrels of each.  Of course, you can’t replicate the complex yet subtle flavor of barrel-pickled pickles.  But these pickled tomatoes are pretty darn good, even without a barrel.  And incredibly easy to make.
This day, I went to the farmers market, and bought 17 pounds of cherry-type tomatoes (they’re more of a grape shape, but they’re little; like miniature Roma tomatoes). You’ll also need a lot of dill and garlic.
So here’s what you’d need, if you’d like to give this a try.

Tomatoes for pickling, all 17 pounds!

Ingredients:

• Tomatoes (I had 17 pounds, but you can start out small, so scale the recipe down).
• Dill (a lot, but depends on how much you love or hate dill; I kinda hate it so I used about a handful per jar)
• Garlic (same as dill, depends on how much you love it or hate it and how spicy you want the final result; I used 2 heads of garlic for 17 pound of tomatoes)
• Salt (I used pickling salt; see Basic Proportion below)
• Water (boiling or just after it boiled; you want it kinda hot to dissolve the salt)
• Black peppercorns

Basic Proportion:
For each liter of water (4 cups), use a heaping tablespoon of salt.
Start out with 1 TB of black peppercorns

Steps:
1. Prepare everything:
Wash the tomatoes. And yes, I really did wash all 17 pounds of tomatoes, one at a time. It took a while, but I don’t want to eat dirt. If you don’t mind the dirt, you probably just rinse them.
Sterilize your jars by boiling them for about 10 minutes.
Slice the garlic lengthwise. I like it sliced because it releases more flavor that way. That’s my story and I’m sticking with it.
Boil water and dissolve the salt.  I use the electric teapot (in the background of the above photo), it’s fast so it saves me time.

Pickling jars assembly line

2. Fill jars:
I start by putting about a handful of dill on the bottom of the jar.
Then, I add 3 slices of garlic (so a clove and a half).
Then, add a few peppercorns. I tend to go a little heavy on these, but do as you like.
Add tomatoes. I do squish them a little, just to fit more in.
After a few layers of tomatoes, about half way through the jar, I add a few more slices of garlic and more peppercorns (about 1/4 TB, but do as much or as little as you like).

Pickling tomatoes in jars

3. Once the jars are filled, add the water. I add it till everything is submerged, but if a little bit of a tomato sticks out, I don’t panick. But be sure to leave a little head space; you don’t want the jars to explode or something.

4. Once the jars are filled and lids are tightly on, you’re done. Stick them in the fridge for a few weeks before eating. You can keep them in the fridge for a while, but I don’t know how long exactly since mine don’t last that long.

Pickled Tomatoes - Done!

4a. If you’d like to keep these on the shelf and not in the fridge, you can use the water-bath method for preserving. To do this, place the jars carefully into the water-bath canner, close the lid, and boil for about 15 minutes. This is what I did with these tomatoes. I have others in the fridge, for now.