I was thinking about the crazy abundance of mustard greens that I had in my fridge the other day (Maybe I got a
little too excited at the .50/bunch sale at Kroger...) and wondered if pickled greens were a thing. With a little googling, it turned out that they ARE a thing and super popular in Vietnamese, Chinese, and Thai food! Hooray! This was AWESOME news as I'd already decided it was going to be a thing for me even if it wasn't a
real thing. Since all I know about pickling is that in the summer when my mama makes sweet pickles, stirring the vat is G-R-O-S-S, it was very, very good news to have some recipes to use as a starting point. Plus I'm a HUGE HUGE Chinese and Thai food fan. I checked out a couple of recipes (
here-- Even food bloggers read food blogs, BTW.) Some of which involved serious pickling processes, and ultimately chose to base mine on this
one from Saveur because it seemed easy enough for my first go. Turns out it was easy and it made these lovely, crunchy, super tart pickles that I served on my southern take on Banh Mi, as the base of greens in a Venison salad, and in Venison Thai Larb. The next time you want a delicious side dish or have too many greens in your fridge, try this easy-peasy recipe on for size!
2 tbsp. sugar
1 tbsp. salt
1⁄4 cup rice vinegar
1/2 onion, cut into short lengths
1⁄2 lb. Mustard greens
3 red & green jalapeno chiles, split lengthwise
A clean mason jar for storage
What to do:
Wash and trim your greens and onions. I wanted mine to be full and lush and long. I was imagining using them on sandwiches, so it made sense to keep mine as in-tact as possible. I ended up trimming a few of them down though to fill in the jar a bit better. You want enough greens to fill a quart.. I didn't have a quart sized measuring cup, so I used a pot.
