How to use pickled cranberries?
I went on a canning spree last summer (crazy pregnancy hormones) and now I've got several jars of pickled cranberries, cranberry chutney and pickled apples that I have no idea how to use. The pickled apples are not good eaten on their own - they have a very strong clove flavor. I also several jars of canned beets and pickled beets from my grandma that I don't know what to do with. Any ideas on how to use these up?
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1) use the chutney as a garnish for curry dishes and rijstaffel (Dutch Indonesian rice buffet)
2) add one of your canned treasures to a Cole slaw or potato salad
3) use the canned beets to make beet pancakes. Serve with feta and a bitter green. Union Square Cafe has a great recipe I''ve made often.
4) make borscht (beet soup) by buzzing the canned beets in a processor. Can be a cold summer soup with sour cream or yogurt swirled in. Or a hot soup with beef.
5) use the beets, sliced thin, as a sandwich garnish on cold chicken, Turkey or beef.
6) use the cranberries in Sicilian recipes as a variation on raisins, often mixed with capers and pignoli...nice blend of sweet, salty, rich and nutty.
7) if you'all really don't want to eat beets and cranberries, give them to a community org for "bake sale" type event or pot luck supper.
Hope these ideas help.
https://food52.com/recipes/27134-sour-cherry-and-cranberry-mostarda
Chop and stir into a sharp, prepared mustard, e.g., https://food52.com/recipes/6466-apple-mustard (Adjust liquid accordingly.)
Save until Thanksgiving and mix them with fresh, raw cranberries. (One of my favorite discoveries in recent years has been the application of a time-honored pie-making technique - stirring raw berries in with some cooked ones -- to cranberry sauce. E.g., https://food52.com/recipes/24974-breakthrough-cranberry-sauce-bay-leaves-optional-but-recommended
Stir the chutney into a good, sharp prepared mustard. Serve on a cheese board, or on any cheese sandwich.
Buzz the cranberries in a blender to use as the base of a vinaigrette. Use a touch of cider vinegar if necessary. Use it on fresh beets and salads made with red lettuce.
The possibilities are endless . . . .
(I'm a chronic binge canner who ends up with several dozen jars each year of items in need of repurposing.) ;o)
The flavored mustard and cranberry vinaigrette especially sound wonderful!
You'd think that someone her grandma's age who has been making and presumably using pickles for decades would have some idea what her own family members and relatives would enjoy especially in light of ktr's admittedly "strange food preferences" (sic).
CV, if you find my questions difficult to answer, just don't answer them. There are many questions here that go unanswered and I will not be offended if mine do not get answered as well.
Your personal tastes are completely baffling to me (I seem to agree with your husband more than you), so you may want to rethink whether or not you should be posting these questions here.
You appear to be motivated to cook things for your family, not just yourself, so you should really be asking those whom you will be feeding.
Anyhow, good luck.
And the cranberries were an experiment. Neither my husband or I grew up eating them in any form other than the occasional raisin or glass or cranberry juice, so I'm not really sure why I decided I "needed" to can them last year.
And, yes, I'll be the first to admit I do sometimes have strange food preferences. I make sure to save them for meals I'm eating alone!
If you can't, toss them and consider it a lesson to be more judicious when you make things.
Perhaps more than any other regular Hotline poster, you are the one whose questions are the hardest to answer because of your strange preferences. After all, no matter what the group consensus opinion is here, if you don't agree (which is often), what does it matter what we suggest?