Excerpted from Barbara Pleasant’s Homegrown Pantry.
You can increase the sugar in this recipe if you want the asparagus spears to taste more like bread-and-butter pickles.
Pickled Asparagus Recipe
Makes 4–5 half-pint jars
Ingredients
- 20 asparagus spears, more or less
- 3 tablespoons salt, plus 1 teaspoon
- 5 small garlic cloves
- 2 cups vinegar
- ¼ cup sugar
- 1 teaspoon mustard seeds
- 1⁄8 teaspoon ground turmeric
Instructions
- Cut the asparagus into uniform pieces that will fit inside the jars, leaving ½ inch of headspace.
- Place the asparagus in a large bowl and sprinkle with 3 tablespoons of the salt. Cover with cold water and allow to sit for 3 hours.
- Drain in a colander, and rinse off the excess salt. Tightly pack the asparagus into warm jars, and place 1 garlic clove in each jar.
- Bring the vinegar, sugar, mustard seeds, turmeric, and the remaining 1 teaspoon salt to a simmer, and pour over the asparagus. Process in a water-bath or steam canner (page 33) for 10 minutes.
About the Book:
Now that you’ve mastered gardening basics, you want to enjoy your bounty year-round, right? Homegrown Pantry picks up where beginning gardening books leave off, with in-depth profiles of the 55 most popular crops—including beans, beets, squash, tomatoes, and much more—to keep your pantry stocked throughout the year. In-depth profiles highlight how many plants to grow of each crop for a year’s worth of eating, and which storage methods work best for specific varieties. Author Barbara Pleasant culls tips from decades of her own gardening experience and from growers across North America to offer planting, care, and harvesting refreshers for every region and each vegetable.
Buy the Book
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