Pickling has always been important to residents of the Smokies and other portions of the southern Appalachian highlands. For generations the process provided a means of preserving foodstuffs which did not necessarily lend themselves to other means of keeping.
Moreover, a key ingredient of the pickling process, vinegar, was readily available. A portion of a fine crop of apples, a fruit which did particularly well in the region, with trees or a small orchard forming a part of almost every home place, could be made into cider vinegar with minimal trouble. All else that was needed for most pickling recipes—beyond the fruit or vegetable being preserved—was salt, sugar, and maybe some spices.
Cleo Hicks Williams, in a delightful though little-known memoir, Gratitude for Shoes: Growing Up Poor in the Smokies, describes the role of pickling in her family in intriguing fashion. “I reckin you can pickle just about anything. We had pickled corn, beans, beets, okry, green tomaters, and cucumbers. They even pickled the cabbage stalks. Sometimes they used salt brine, and sometimes a vinegar and sugar mixture. They made kraut and chow-chow in churn jars … The big barrels and churn jars full of pickles was kept out in the spring house.”
Thanks to their tangy, delightfully different tastes, pickles and the practice of pickling continued to be popular long after other means of preservation became available. As side dishes, appetizers, a means of adding zest and interest to salads, and in other fashions limited by little other than the reach of your culinary imagination, pickles provide table pleasure beyond measure.
Here are a few recipes you might want to try. Since cucumber pickles are so commonplace, this focus is on other enjoyable items.
Pickled Peaches
During the summer months my paternal grandmother, Grandma Minnie, always kept a jar of pickled peaches in her refrigerator. I loved to come in the house after Grandpa Joe and I had been involved in some sort of “doings”—maybe hard, honest work hoeing out corn or something like knocking down a wasp’s nest so we could get some prime fishing bait—and eat one of those peaches. They had been peeled whole and put up in a pickling mixture ranging distinctly in the direction of sweetness. There were always a few cloves hanging around the bottom of the jar, and the sweet, scrumptious taste, with more than a hint of vinegar in the background, seemed to me especially refreshing during summer’s heat. Some family members didn’t seem to care for pickled peaches, but Grandpa, who had an appetite for pretty much everything, loved them just as much as I did. He was, after all, just a boy trapped in an old man’s body, and the two of us munching contently on those peaches, with sticky juice breaking the boundaries of our mouths and needing to be wiped from our chins, must have brought unexpressed yet quietly satisfying delight to Grandma Minnie. Here, to the best of my memory (she never wrote anything down and all her food preparation relied exclusively on memory and experience), is how she made her pickled peaches.
- Crushed vitamin C tablet or similar means of preventing discoloration (I have no idea of how Grandma did this, although possibly she used a pinch of flowers of sulfur, something she utilized for the same purpose when drying apples or peaches).
- Cold water (enough to cover fruit)
- Two dozen small, peeled peaches (early clingstones, which mountain folks knew as Indian peaches, do particularly well)
- 2½ cups sugar
- 1¼ cups distilled white vinegar
- 4 teaspoons pickling spice
- Tablespoon of whole cloves
- Pinch (1/4 teaspoon) salt
Put water with dissolved acidulation agent to avoid discoloration in a large bowl. Place peaches in the water and allow to stand for 10 minutes, stirring a couple of times during this period. Drain well using a colander and then toss with the sugar. Chill in a large covered pot or back in the same bowl, covered with wrap, for 10 to 12 hours. Add vinegar, spices, salt, and a half cup of water to chilled peaches and bring to a boil. Skim off the foam, reduce heat, and simmer for a few minutes until peaches are tender. Place peaches in sterilized canning jars which have been sitting in hot water, making sure to get one or two whole cloves in each jar. Bring reserved liquid from the peaches to a boil and pour over peaches. Use an ice pick or thin knife to run between the peaches and remove any air bubbles. Close jars with canning lids and screw tops and process for 20-25 minutes in a canner before removing and allowing to seal.
Watermelon Rind Pickles
While most recipes call for cutting away the outer peeling and removing any red flesh next to the rind, Grandma Minnie left the rind intact as well as a goodly bit of the red melon next to the rind. It was an ideal way to utilize the remnants of the “cannonball” or “rattlesnake” watermelons which were an integral part of summer’s eating joys.
BRINE
- 4 tablespoons salt
- 1 quart water
- Watermelon rinds
PICKLE SYRUP
- 8 cups sugar
- 4 cups vinegar
- 8 teaspoons whole cloves
- 12 cinnamon sticks
- Pinch of mustard seed (optional)
Cut the watermelon rind into one-inch cubes and allow to soak in the brine overnight. The next morning drain off the liquid, add fresh water, and cook the rinds until tender.
Then prepare the pickle syrup, boiling the mixture and then allow to sit for 15 minutes. Add drained watermelon rind and cook until the cubes become somewhat transparent. Process in sterilized jars. Properly done, this sweet pickle will be crunch, tasty, and appealing to the eye.
Chow Chow
A relish which belongs to a bowl of October beans the way redeye gravy partners cured ham, chow chow sometimes goes by the name of piccalilli (although I’ve seldom heard that usage in mountain talk). It offered mountain folks a way of preserving a wide variety of vegetables through what was, in essence, a pickling process. Other than common denominators of cabbage and vinegar, the variations on chow chow contents are almost endless. Here’s a recipe as true to Grandma Minnie’s method as my memory allows.
- 2 heads cabbage, diced fairly fine
- 6 large green tomatoes, diced
- 4 tablespoons pickling salt
- 4 pods dried red pepper, crushed (amount can vary according to your “heat” preferences)
- 1 cup water
Place the vegetables in a large stoneware crock and then add the other ingredients. Mix thoroughly and pack tightly, being sure the liquid (brine) rises over the top. Cover with cheese cloth and let set in a warm room for two weeks or until the chow chow stops “working” (no bubbles appear on the surface). Check every two or three days. Store in pint or quart jars.
Pickled Okra
Most of the okra we grew either found its way to the family table in expeditious fashion as fried okra or else went into soup mix canned for winter use. I don’t ever recall Momma using it for a dish I later came to love, stewed okra and tomatoes, nor did she prepare pickled okra. On the other hand, Grandma, who did a great deal more pickling in general, annually made at least a couple of runs of okra pickles. There would always be pickled pods on a relish tray alongside pickled cucumbers and beets at large gatherings of the extended family, and Grandpa, who in truth found pretty much everything toothsome, was powerful partial to pickled okra which had appreciable “bite” thanks to the use of several hot red peppers in its preparation.
- 4 pounds of okra
- 4 to 8 pods of hot red pepper (8 pods creates a fiery pickle)
- 4 cloves garlic
- 1 cup apple cider vinegar or white vinegar (for color emphasis white is best)
- 1 cup water
- ½ cup pickling salt
Thoroughly wash the pods and cut the stem away quite close at the base. Pack the whole pods, stem end down, into hot, sterilized pint jars. Add pepper and garlic cloves to each jar. Dissolve salt in vinegar and water and bring to a boil. Pour in each jar until full and seal at once.
Pickled Beans
Other pickled vegetables, notably cucumbers but also beets, okra, and corn, received more attention in most households than green beans. But beans were pickled, either strung and broken just as if they were to be cooked fresh from the garden, but whole beans stacked vertically in a jar when pickled made an eye-catcher on the shelf, at a community gathering, or perhaps for an entry at a county fair.
- A peck or half bushel of fresh-picked green beans
- Large stoneware crock
- ¾ cup of salt per gallon of green beans
- Corn shucks, outer leafs from cabbage, or grape leafs
Clean, string, and break (or leave whole if you want to take that route) the beans. In a large stew pot, cook with water until the beans are beginning to soften. Drain and rinse in colder water, draining three or four times until the beans are cool. Add salt, being sure to mix it thoroughly with the beans, and place in the stoneware crock. Cover with leafs or shucks which have been carefully washed. Top with a plate and weight it down with a brick, old hand iron, or a rock. Cover the top of the crock with cheesecloth and tie the cloth down tight. Allow the beans and brine to work for a week and then remove from the crock. Rinse once, quickly, in cold water, and then bring the beans to a boil in a large pot. Place them in sterilized quart jars straight from a hot water bath and then cover with enough brine to reach the top of the beans before sealing.
About the author: Jim Casada and his late wife, Ann, are authors of a number of cookbooks. Jim currently has a book on culinary recollections from his youth, “Fishing for Chickens: A Smokies Food Memoir,” in press. To learn more about it or order previous cookbooks, or to receive Jim’s free monthly e-newsletter (which always includes several recipes), visit jimcasadaoutdoors.com.