We have a lot of zucchini plants (also known as gourgettes or summer squash) in our garden. Which means we get a lot of zucchinis. I'd say it's about 2,5 kg every other day. So, what to do with that many zucchinis? Another zucchini lasagne (which actually tastes great) or a zucchini smoothie?
Options are not that limited but we want to conserve some of the delicious vegetable for the colder season too. Then there are two options: freezing (which we do a lot) or making preserves. The later one takes a lot of prepration but when I saw the results I have to admit that it is worth it.
Some of the German internet sites like Chefkoch.de showed a lot of ideas. The basic is to mix chopped zucchinis with red or yellow peppers and have it swim in a sweet sour sauce. We used two recepies and combined them to fit our needs.
- http://www.chefkoch.de/rezepte/108941045664940/Eingelegte-Zucchini.html (German)
- http://www.chefkoch.de/rezepte/520451148372260/Zucchini-suess-sauer-ein… (German)
Let's start from the beginning.
Ingredients
| 2 kg | Zucchinis |
| 1 kg | Red and/or yellow peppers |
| 500 g | Onions |
| 1/2 Liter | Vinegar |
| 1/2 Liter | Apple juice |
| 200 g | Sugar |
| 4 tsp | Salt |
| 3 Tbsp | Curry powder |
| 2 Tbsp | Mustard seeds |
| 2 Tbsp | Honey |
| To taste | Dill |
| Juice of a one lemon |
Tools & Stuff
| Knife & cutting boards |
| 10 Liter pot |
| Bosch MUM (+ continuous shredder) |
| 0,5 to 1Liter glass jars for preserving (sterile) (we used 3 of each) |
| Spoon (sterile) |
Cutting to pieces
We first cut the zucchini with our Bosch MUM (awesome kitchen machine) to small cubes. Then we cut the pepper. The pepper first needs to be separated from its core of course, which we did by hand. I have to say that peppers get diced pretty well with the machine but their fine skin is difficult to handle. You might end up chopping them by hand as well. The onions we did per hand too, as we wanted half rings.
Mixing the ingredients and boil
When all the peppers, onions and zucchinis are chopped we mixed the rest of the ingredients in a big pot and brought it to boil. Once it was boiling strong, we added the vegetables. Bring them back to boil and once they boil keep them going for 5 minutes.
Fill in hot
Your jars need to be prepared prior to filling. We need to make them as sterile as possible. If you have dish washer start the dish washing process at 70°C (158°F) and make sure the dish washer stays closed till after the program has ended, so you can use the hot, clean jars and lids directly from the machine. Another way washing them per hand and then boiling them in water. If boiling in water make sure they are completely submerged and stay in the water from the beginning - otherwise you might risk glass cracks. Remember to boil the lids too. If you use tools for the filling process make sure they are sterile as well. We don't want any unwanted friends sitting on our tools and jars.
Then we filled the mix into the glasses, making sure the vegetables were submerged in the brine. The jars are then closed and left to cool. The twist-off lids started making the "plop" sound as the contents cooled, showing us that a vacuum has appeared in the jar and that we can hope that the contents stay tasty and mold-free for many months to come! Once the jars were completely cool, we labelled the jars and brought them to our root cellar for storage. Now the only problem is to wait a little bit before eating our chutney-type product, as the taste will intensify if we wait just a bit!
