If you love pickled carrots, then you’ll find plenty of ideas below. Let me know which one is your favorite!
I love pickling and have so many ideas and recipes about this topic. And then I felt a lot of you look at us like this:

Pickled Carrots

There’s a ton of great recipes below and I know that when spring carrots have sprung, I for one will be referring back here again and again…’cause you can never have enough reasons to put those babies in a jar. Well, maybe there’s enough here – so let’s get to it!

Carrot Pickle adapted from Savoring India by Julie Sahni. If you like hot, very flavorful things, this will never last that long.

Baby carrots in honey, vinegar and dill – flamingo musings love the honey Renee! And don’t worry about what to use ’em for – have a pickle party! Basil carrots – living homegrown fresh quick & easy, she said….just like canning can be!

Carrot and onion sandwich slaw – put a lid on it tossing in olive oil to serve – I like it! Oh, and that slicing video – thank you!

Carrot and onion sandwich slaw – on a little land they say imitation is the best form of flattery! – go here for the recipe.

Carrot relish – simply loving home I think this will dress up any sandwich! Make sure your salsa is from a reliable source – I’m a little worried about the acid level in that one.

Carrot relish – a sweet carroty relish, with onions too! Zoey says she’ll report back after the 3 week waiting period.

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Classic pickled carrots – I’m impressed with your ‘green bag’ solution for storing carrots – that’s a long time!

Dill jardiniere – bigger than a breadbox ok, I’ll let this one slide ’cause you put in an extra carrot. But I don’t know, is it really about the carrots or all those other gorgeous veggies?

Dilly carrots – all I can say Libby is break out the Bloody Marys ’cause these are worth more than a hill of beans to me! And some nutty good carrot cake jam too!

Mexican inspired pickled carrots with jalapeños and onions – that’s a mouthful! And so are these!

Moroccan pickled carrots – what a nice addition of oregano and sweet peppers – and the little baby carrots look so happy in the jar. 🙂

Pickled carrots – mock paper scissors more success for Tengrain’s little cooking school! …and can I just say, love those graphics! 🙂

Pickled carrots and daikon – food in jars. And just in the nick of time, Marisa slides in with this beauty. Love the anise!

Pickled carrots and leek shreds – adds color to a winter table. And your cheeks I imagine.

8 gallons of cream (plus 2 gallons of buttermilk)

You may know that I drove to Vermont early this past Friday to pick up 8 gallons of cream for a year’s worth of butter. I picked up the cream in the lovely little mountain town of Brattleboro, Vermont. If you ever get a chance to go, do get a coffee at Mocha Joes, and whatever you do, get a croissant at Amy’s Bakery Arts Café. Trust me, I might drive back just for another one, or two.

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I’ve been asked how I know that 8 gallons of cream is the right amount for a year’s worth of butter for two people.

I don’t. But I do know that I bake with it. I make ghee – which I cook with most often, and I like to slather it on toast with jam. M, being half Danish, spreads it on anything edible with a flat surface. We’re both partial to a hefty dollop on warm breakfast grains, and did I ever mention that I’m a popcorn junkie? …Oh, and I love biscuits and scones!

If you’re planning to try this at home, my first advice to you is to suss out a local dairy that cares about their cows and their product. Happy cows make better cream, it’s true! My cream came from the lovely Butterworks Farm. But I am sure there’s a dairy that cares near you. At Butterworks Farm they pasteurize their cream the old-fashioned way: held at 145-150 degrees for 30 minutes. Do talk to your farmer to find out what their practices are, and don’t use ultra-pasteurized cream because you will not be able to produce butter from it.

If you plan on trying this at home on a smaller scale – like butter for a week – then pick up a pint or two of the best quality organic cream you can find at your local co-op or farm stand.

Let’s Do This!

…That’s what I said to M yesterday when I enlisted his help with the first 2 gallons. The first 2 gallons of cream were destined to be sweet butter, otherwise known as uncultured butter. Sweet butter is typically what we eat here in the US. It comes from cream that has not been cultured – or soured.

First, see how yellow and bright it is? Grass, baby, grass! Cows need grass, and so does your butter!

Sweet Butter

organic cream (not ultra-pasteurized)
sea salt (optional)
quart or half gallon mason jars

Directions

1. Leave cream at room temperature for a few hours until it’s fully warmed to room temperature.

2. Pour room temperature cream into jar. Important: the jar should be double the size of the amount of cream you are using. If you are shaking a pint of cream, you need a quart jar. If you are shaking a quart, you need a half gallon jar.

3. Make sure the cap is screwed on very tight and here we go: shake it! Turn it up! (you should feel something happening in the jar by the time the song is done). It will get thicker and thicker, keep shaking!

4. After 5 minutes or so of shaking you’ll see and feel a bright yellow clump and the rest will be a thin white liquid. You’ve just made butter!

Keep shaking it another minute or so to make sure it is completely separated.

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5. Pour the buttermilk into a bowl, or better yet a jug or pitcher. Use a large wooden spoon or the like to hold the butter in while you’re pouring. Set buttermilk aside, more on it below.

6. Place butter in a bowl and run very, very cold water over the butter while you press down with a large spoon to squeeze as much of the buttermilk out as you possibly can. Pour the water off. Continue doing this until the water that is coming off does not look milky anymore. The clearer the water is as it runs off, the better. Your butter will last longer if all of the buttermilk is expelled.

7. Here, you can add salt to taste or keep it unsalted. If you are making butter to keep in the fridge, the salt will help it stay fresh a bit longer. Butter will last about a week to two in the refrigerator. Frozen, as you may have guessed by my endeavor, it will last for approximately one year with no change in quality.

8. Pack in refrigerator or freezer-proof airtight containers. If packing for the freezer, label and date.

This batch was made for my baking and ghee making, so no salt was added and I packed it in 1/2 liter jars. 2 gallons of cream yielded six jars – approximately 3 quarts – of sweet unsalted butter. In the freezer they went!

There was about 1/2 cup extra which we sea-salted right up, spread on some crusty sourdough and topped with sliced, just-picked radishes.

IMO, it doesn’t get much better.

Now about that buttermilk. This is not the thick cultured buttermilk you can find in stores. It is water, dissolved milk sugars, and protein. It is different from whey in that it comes solely from cream and not milk, or milk and cream. The true buttermilk – it’s what’s left when all of the fat globules within the cream get agitated enough to band together and shout to everything else, “get out!”

This buttermilk is good stuff. You should pass it through a strainer, put it in a sealed jar, and keep it in the fridge. You can make pancakes, biscuits and cornbread with it. But my favorite way of all is to enjoy it cold, straight-up. It lasts for a week or so in the fridge.

But it’s so damn refreshing, it would never last that long in my house.

I bet you thought you heard the last of my year’s supply of butter-making didn’t you? Yup, you thought I went through all that buttermilk and used up every last drop of cream too, right? Think again. 8 gallons of cream and 2 gallons of buttermilk goes a long way for 1 catty pilgrim.

You see, that cultured buttermilk I had just keeps on giving. As I said over here, you can easily make more of it with what you’ve got. And the cream, ok, yes it’s true, this is the last of it (sad face). I used this final quart of cream, plus a whole gallon of cultured buttermilk to make a big batch of the tastiest ricotta I’ve ever had. Take it from this half Italian tigress who has ricotta in her blood – I grew up on the stuff – this buttermilk version is swoon-worthy.

This makes a lotta ricotta – close to a full quart. Since it lasts only about a week in the fridge at perfect quality, you probably don’t need to make this much. So go ahead, half it. Of course, if you’re prone to eating it by the bowlful like me, then you better dairy up!

…Basically, I’ve just decided I need a cow.

Buttermilk Ricotta

1 gallon buttermilk
1 quart cream
2 1/2 teaspoons sea salt
butter muslin or a double layer of cheese cloth
thermometer

Directions

1. Combine the buttermilk, cream and sea salt in a non-reactive stock pot (stainless or enameled covered iron) and heat on medium to 190 degrees – it should take about 25-30 minutes. Stir occasionally and gently as the temperature nears to 190 to prevent scorching. Be gentle.

2. As soon as the temperature reaches 190 degrees, take off heat. Cover and let sit for 5 minutes. You will have very delicate curds.

3. Place a damp (rinse it in hot water and squeeze dry) butter muslin or double-layered cheese cloth inside a large strainer. Place the strainer over a large bowl. Gently scoop the curds into the strainer, and then pour the whey directly over. If you’ve made ricotta before using a different method you may notice that the separation of curds and whey is not as straight-forward with this method, and that it is a bit difficult to see the separation.

That’s ok.

4. At a certain point, the whey will seemingly stop dripping through the muslin and strainer in the bowl. You could leave it there for hours and it will drain to perfection eventually. Or you can lift the muslin out with everything tucked inside (it will be full of liquid so be careful) and tie it around a faucet to hang for about 30 minutes. Tthe weight will help expel the excess whey.

5. When most of the obvious liquid is out, place the whole lot back into the strainer. It should still be quite soft and wet, like this:

6. After that it’s maker’s choice. I let it drain for another 20-30 minutes so that the finished cheese is still quite moist. It’s better to err on the side of too moist as it will firm up even more when chilled. When done, transfer to an airtight container. It will stay fresh for up to a week in the fridge.

Or, before you do any such thing, you can scoop out a warm and generous hunk and christen your pasta arrabiatta with it.

I don’t know if I’ll ever lose the wonder and excitement of growing my own food. I hope not!

Honeyed Cayenne Chiles

Adapted from The Joy of Pickling by Linda Ziedrich

1 & 1/4 pound cayenne (or other) chiles, stemmed & sliced into no larger than 1/4 inch rings
1/2 teaspoon black or yellow mustard seeds
1/2 teaspoon whole coriander seeds
5 whole cloves
5 whole allspice berries
3/4 quart apple cider vinegar
1 & 1/4 tablespoon honey
1 & 1/2 teaspoon sea salt
2 small garlic cloves, sliced
4 whole bay leaves (make sure they still smell like bay!)
12 black peppercorns
2 tablespoons olive oil
1/2 pint mason jars

Yield: 2 pints

Directions

1. Prepare canning pot and jars. No need to sterilize, but make sure jars get warm.

2. Place mustard seeds, coriander seeds, allspice and cloves in a spice bag, tea ball, or tie in a small snitch of cheese cloth.

3. Combine vinegar, honey, & salt in a medium sauce pan, add spice bag. Bring to a boil. When just boiling, add sliced chiles and bring back up to a simmer.

4. Take all four 1/2 pint jars out of the canner and place right side up on a towel. Divide the garlic and peppercorns evenly between jars. Fill each jar 1/4 of the way full with chiles and add one bay leaf to each jar, placing it against the side and tucking the tip into the chiles to steady the leaf against the side. Add the rest of the chiles evenly between jars. Pour in the vinegar mixture, filling each jar to just under a 1/2 inch head space.

5. Slide a plastic knife, chopstick, or small spatula around the inside rim of jar, and tap it gently on the counter to loosen any air bubbles. Drizzle 1 & 1/2 teaspoon of olive oil into each of the jars. Wipe the rims clean with a wet paper towel and place the two piece lids on.

6. Hot water bath process for 10 minutes.

You must wait three weeks to eat these pickles.

I know, I know.

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