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Quick Swedish Pickled Cucumbers: An Adventure in Cooking from Fäviken

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February  5, 2013
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Quick Swedish Pickled Cucumbers: An Adventure in Cooking from Fäviken
  • Makes a cucumber's worth
Author Notes

Chef and author Magnus Nilsson of rural Sweden’s acclaimed restaurant, Fävaken Magasinet, writes about several methods for making pickles, including wet and dry brines. His quick method uses salt, followed by a white vinegar, sugar, and water brine, which is as good for herring as it is for cucumbers and other raw or cooked vegetables.

Like a lot of Swedish pickling recipes, Chef Nilsson calls for one part white vinegar to two parts sugar and three parts water. That mix doesn’t translate well for Americans, as Swedish white vinegars are much stronger than American. For serious pickling using Nilsson’s advice, I would get out the pH paper. But this adaption worked well for quick and crisp cucumbers that I planned to keep in the refrigerator and eat up in a few weeks.

(This recipe was adapted from Fävaken by Magnus Nilsson, Phaidon, October 2012)
—Greenstuff

What You'll Need
Ingredients
  • 1 medium cucumber
  • 2 teaspoons kosher or flaky sea salt
  • 1/2 cup white vinegar
  • 1/2 cup water
  • 1/3 cup sugar
Directions
  1. Thinly slice the cucumber, carefully mix in the salt, and let it drain in a colander or sieve for about an hour. The cucumber slices will start to look as if they have been cooked.
  2. While the cucumbers are draining, mix together the vinegar, sugar, and water to make a pickling solution.
  3. Rinse any remaining salt from the cucumbers, place them in a ceramic or glass bowl or jar, and completely immerse them with the pickling solution.
  4. They’ll start to taste like pickles within an hour. Store them in the refrigerator.
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2 Reviews

susan G.
susan G. February 5, 2013
What else would you use this for? Carrots, beets, onions?
 
Greenstuff
Greenstuff February 5, 2013
The Swedes use it for anything--from cooked or uncooked vegetables to herring. When I first planned to give it a try, I was going to use it on small carrots. Magnus Nilsson has a whole page in the book on how to peel carrots! I decided that if I used it for them, they'd be better blanched. A zillion years ago, I used a similar recipe to pickle alewives (small river herring that run up New England streams), and they were great.