Quick Pickled Beets
For these easy pickled beets, you only need to let them marinate in the pickling mixture for about 30 minutes to get great flavor. Marinating them longer just enhances the taste. Try them in place of cucumber pickles as a condiment or as a vegetable side dish for roasted chicken or beef.
Pickled Red Onions
These pickled red onions take on a beautiful pink hue. The slivers have just the right amount of sweet, tangy and salty flavors for use in salads, sandwiches and more. The onions are thin enough to absorb the flavors yet maintain their crunch.
Quick & Easy Pickled Cabbage
This sweet-and-salty quick pickled cabbage is great to have on hand for a topping for sandwiches, hot dogs or brats. Both green and red cabbage work well and maintain their crunch after marinating in the pickling liquid that imparts a subtle, spicy flavor thanks to chile peppers.
Pickled Garlic Cloves
Pickled garlic? You bet! This simple pickled garlic clove recipe is made by adding whole peeled garlic cloves to a flavorful brine. Use almost any type of clear vinegar—white, red or cider vinegar.
Spicy Pickled Carrots
This pickled carrot recipe gets its heat from jalapeños and is a great topping for tacos, tostadas and quesadillas.
Peach Sangria
You'll want to bring a pitcher of this white sangria to parties and potlucks all summer long. Fresh peaches look gorgeous in these delicious sparkling peach cocktails, but frozen peaches work too (and help keep your drink cool).
Homemade Kombucha
Kombucha is a lightly fizzy, fermented tea drink that's making waves for its probiotic benefits and tart flavor. Making kombucha at home is quite simple: make sweetened tea, add it to a jar with a scoby (symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast) and let it ferment for about a week. The scoby is a pancake-shaped living culture that eats most of the sugar in the tea, turning it into a tangy and delicious fermented beverage.
Homemade Kimchi
If you are looking to start fermenting your own vegetables, the Korean dish kimchi is a great place to start. It's easy to make, and fermentation takes just a few days. Once you have kimchi on hand, serve this healthy dish along with any meal, as an ingredient in stir-fries, stews, savory pancakes and more, or as a condiment to liven up grain bowls, tacos, sandwiches—and the list goes on!
Intense Strawberry Preserves
This strawberry preserve recipe is made in small batches, to reduce the amount of time the fruit is heated so it retains more of its intense fresh flavor. If you use about 25 percent underripe berries in the mix of berries (they're higher in natural pectin), you don't have to add any store-bought pectin.
Sweet Pickled Peppers
Using sweet brine instead of sour tempers the heat of hot peppers in these sweet pickled peppers.
Jardiniere
Is your garden booming? Making quick pickles is a low-pressure way to use up your bounty. Mix and match the vegetables as you see fit; just try to maintain a variety of textures and colors. Tip: After you finish a jar, use the leftover brine to make vinaigrette.
Homemade Fruit Preserves
Chef Vivian Howard's book, This Will Make It Taste Good, is all about creating homemade condiments and seasonings, then using them to boost the flavor in other recipes. This fruit preserves recipe makes a big batch, but there many ways to use it beyond just spreading it on a piece of toast. Use it to make a glaze for meat, chicken or fish, stir it into yogurt, pair it with cheese for an appetizer, or even shake some into a cocktail.