A Quick Pickle Fix: Turn Your Summer Garden Bounty Into Crunchy, Tangy, Almost-Instant Pickles

A Quick Pickle Fix: Turn Your Summer Garden Bounty Into Crunchy, Tangy, Almost-Instant Pickles
Quick-pickling is a short-term method that involves marinating the vegetables in a sugar-and-vinegar brine. casanisa/Shutterstock
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I do like my pickles, but I’m a lazy preserver. My solution is a speedy fix that omits the bother of canning: I make quick pickles. Quick-pickling is for impatient types like me, with (nearly) instantly gratifying results.

No time is better for pickling than summer, which yields more vegetables than you can shake a stick at. The gardens are bursting with ripe produce, as are the farmers markets. Once you’ve munched through your garden and shopping basket, cooked, roasted, and steamed your pickings, and tossed your harvests into salads, the question of what to do with the ever-replenishing mountain of veggies presents itself—not unlike a large, leafy green elephant in the room.

Lynda Balslev
Lynda Balslev
Author
Lynda Balslev is a cookbook author, food and travel writer, and recipe developer based in the San Francisco Bay Area, where she lives with her Danish husband, two children, a cat, and a dog. Balslev studied cooking at Le Cordon Bleu Ecole de Cuisine in Paris and worked as a personal chef, culinary instructor, and food writer in Switzerland and Denmark. Copyright 2025 Lynda Balslev. Distributed by Andrews McMeel Syndication.
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