Pickled apples?

October 22, 2010 6:19 PM

I'm looking at the recipe for pickled apples in Linda Ziedrich's "The Joy of Pickling". These are whole apples pickled by fermentation (not just vinegar-soaked). I'm intrigued. Can you tell me about your experience eating pickled apples? Or better yet making them yourself (tips/tricks/results)? The info I've found online so far is pretty thin.
posted by madmethods to Food & Drink (3 answers total)

Pickled apples taste fantastic! I use them as a condiment with meat and in salads. I have never pickled them myself because I always buy them from the grocery store. They usually pickle Golden Delicious. Not sure which recipe Ziedrich gives but the recipe I know is for 1 kg of apples, rye flour 40 gr, water 3 liter, salt 40 gr., cherry and black currant leaves. And fermentation takes about a month. Enjoy your pickling!
posted by ivanka at 8:09 PM on October 22, 2010

Response by poster: That reminds me of another question with regard to this recipe. Many pickling recipes, including all of the pickled apple recipes I've seen, call for fresh leaves (grape, sour cherry, black currant, ...). Where the heck am I supposed to get them? I just have to go find somebody with the right plant and ask them if I can rip some leaves off of it?
posted by madmethods at 9:25 PM on October 22, 2010

The leaves are a source of tannins and help the pickled goodies stay crunchy (source).

We used oak leaves when making garlic dill pickles last summer - there happened to be oak trees in my husband's office parking lot that we harvested them from. I have heard of stores carrying fresh grape leaves, but in lots of places public oak trees are easy enough to find. You might get an odd look or two for picking a handful of oak leaves, but nobody's likely to care all that much. Of course, if you happen to know someone with the right kind of plant, that would work great, too.
posted by polymath at 10:31 PM on October 22, 2010 [1 favorite]