Easy Pickles, A Quick Way To Use Up Broccoli + A Surprising Carrot Cake with Leah Koenig | Our Best Home Cooking Bites
Food Friends: Home Cooking Made Easy
In this episode of Food Friends, hosts Sonia and Keri share simple, inspiring recipes for busy home cooks. They highlight a quick vinegar-based fridge
Key takeaways
- Quick fridge pickles can be made with any vegetable using a simple vinegar-water-sugar-salt brine and last up to three weeks.
- Broccoli crostini is a satisfying, meatless weeknight dinner that uses sautéed broccoli, garlic, and cheese on toasted bread.
Main topics
- Quick refrigerator pickles
- Broccoli crostini recipe
Notable quotes
"You could do this with any vegetable. This pickle brine works with carrots, radishes, onions. Red onions are like my favorite quick pickle."
Conclusion
This episode celebrates accessible, low-pressure home cooking that prioritizes
Transcript preview
Speaker 2 (0:01) Welcome to Food Friends, a podcast inspiring home cooks to try new dishes in the kitchen by sharing trusted recipes, tips, and friendship. Hi, Speaker 3 (0:12) I'm Sonia. And I'm Keri. We met in Los Angeles over 15 years ago as personal chefs and haven't stopped talking about food since. We're so glad you're here. Speaker 3 (0:24) Hi, Sonia. Hi, Keri. Sonia, what was your best bite this week? Speaker 2 (0:28) My best bite this week was a very, very simple thing, and it was fridge pickles. Speaker 3 (0:32) Ooh, that, by the way, that's somewhat unsurprising given how much you love pickles, and also you're a pickle maker. Is this a different recipe? Is this a recipe you've been making a long time? Where did this come from? Speaker 2 (0:44) Yeah, so often I think I've shared here about lacto-fermented pickles that I'll make, where that's like really just... Fancy. Salt. In some ways, it's the least fancy because all you do is adding salt and water and putting it on your counter till it ferments. This is a vinegar-based brine, so it's not lacto-fermented. But it started with my neighbor and friend. I've known her since high school, actually, my friend, Chris Travis. She had a bumper crop of cucumbers. By bumper crop, I mean insane amount of cucumbers. And so she- Which Speaker 3 (1:13) is the opposite of my garden, which is when both of my cucumber plants completely died. So I wish I also lived next to Chris. Speaker 2 (1:19) Well, and my cucumbers haven't been doing that amazing. I mean, they've been fine, but unremarkable. So she came to my house and was like, please take some of my cucumbers because like, I just can't get through them. She couldn't, she doesn't have room for that many pickle jars either. And she's not lacto-fermenting anyway. She had kind of like a Persian cucumber variety. I would say more like a traditional cucumber. And those aren't the best for pickling, even for fridge pickles, because they're a little watery. There's a reason people use Kirby cucumbers for pickling. They're firmer. They absorb that liquid better. So anyway, I was like, what am I gonna do with all these cucumbers? eat them before they spoil. I can only eat so many salads. And I was like, I'm just gonna make the super easiest fridge pickle because I don't want these for lacto fermentation. So long ago, the chef in LA, Min, taught me a sort of ratio of equal parts white vinegar or white wine vinegar and water. And then it's like sugar than salt. And there's some like five hand rule I can never remember. And I always have to look up the ratios. But essentially, a lot of people usually do some equal amount of water and vinegar, one or two tablespoons of salt, one or two tablespoons of sugar, sometimes equal sugar and salt, and then whatever flavoring you want. In this case, it could be for pickles, I think it's always good to have dill, I think it's good to have garlic, mustard seed, coriander seed, fennel, all of those are great chili if you want a little spicy. And I'm going to link a recipe for super easy fridge pickles. But the thing is, it's just I don't make them that often with cucumbers. And then every time I make them, I'm like, this is the easiest thing in the world. And it tastes better than any pickle on the market. Okay, there's two little tips I want to share. At a garage sale years and years ago, I found one of those things that makes crinkle slices and vegetables. Speaker 3 (2:59) Oh, yeah. My mom has one of those. You Speaker 2 (3:01) know what I'm talking about? It's not a knife, but it's like a little almost like... How do you describe it? It's like a knife shape. Speaker 3 (3:07) It's shaped like a bench scraper, right? But instead of having a flat blade, it has a wavy blade. A Speaker 2 (3:12) wavy blade. Mine has a handle. Yeah, and my Speaker 3 (3:15) mom's has a handle too. Yes. It's like, I think she got it from one of those pampered chef parties or where you like go and you buy kitchen goods from someone's house. Yeah. I Speaker 2 (3:25) think I got this for 25 cents. Amazing. I'm like, I'm going to cut these all into fun little rounds. And the brine is like I said, just vinegar, water, sugar, salt. And I added garlic, dill. mustard seed and coriander seed and Speaker 1 (3:36) peppercorn. And then Speaker 2 (3:37) I just fill my jars. I've stuck in some bay leaves that helps it keep it crisp, or you can do grape leaves. That's another thing. And then you heat up your brine until everything dissolves. You simmer it for like five minutes tops, turn off the heat, let that brine cool till room temp. And then you pour it over your jar of pickles, stick it in the fridge. 24 hours later, you have pickles. And Jonathan. is not even a pickle person. He's only started eating pickles in the last year. But he was like, oh my gosh, this converts me fully to pickles. I'm going to be eating. He's eaten almost the whole jar in Speaker 3 (4:09) like a day. Speaker 2 (4:09) Is Speaker 3 (4:09) he just Speaker 2 (4:09) eating them out of the Speaker 3 (4:10) jar or is he putting them on sandwiches? What's he doing with them? What do you guys do with your pickles? Speaker 2 (4:14) You know, he makes his rice and greens and an egg lunch and then he'll put little pickles on the side. Yeah. Speaker 3 (4:19) Wonderful. I mean, just the season. It's like there's so much bounty. And I think this is such a helpful tip because I... I think a lot of us, either we have gardens or our neighbors have a garden. So how long do these pickles keep then in your fridge? Because they're not processed the same way. Speaker 2 (4:37) Like around three weeks or so. Yeah. So they keep for a while. Sometimes it's Speaker 3 (4:41) a Speaker 2 (4:41) month. Speaker 3 (4:42) It doesn't sound like they're going to last that long in your house though. Speaker 2 (4:45) We're almost done with them. And you could do this with any vegetable. This pickle brine works with carrots, radishes, onions. Red onions are like my favorite quick pickle. Green beans. Truly all the things that are abundant right now, you can stick in some pickle brine, put in your fridge, and then on a sandwich, in a rice bowl, on the side of a meal. It's just a nice little tangy bite. Love that. Well, Keri, what was your best bite of the week? Well, Speaker 3 (5:09) Sonia, my best bite was also kind of simple. It was a broccoli crostini. Speaker 2 (5:13) I love a Cristini moment for you. I love it. I always Speaker 3 (5:16) love a Cristini moment. And I will say it kind of came as a result of I had sent my husband and my son to the grocery store to buy things. And, you know, when I make a list, I kind of know what my quantities are. But when I said, will you get like three heads of broccoli? My husband got three packs of broccoli. So it was double what we actually needed for the recipe that I was using. So Speaker 2 (5:40) I had all this broccoli. Do Speaker 3 (5:41) you Speaker 2 (5:41) mean like bags of cut up? florets? Or do you mean just like giant heads? Or do you mean like they're combined heads? They're combined heads. It's