Making Spicy Pickled Carrots (Tigress' Can Jam, February Edition) #tigresscanjam

It was so close; I almost made carrot-lemon marmalade for Month Two of Tigress’ Can Jam, of which the theme, evidently, is carrots, as officially decreed by the good folks at Doris and Jilly Cook. But I have about 20 jars of grapefruit marmalade from last month, and I have been intending to extend my repertoire further into the savoury department, so I came up with a spicy pickled carrot recipe that’s really an adaptation of two different recipes in the excellent resource Put a Lid on It! Small-Batch Preserving for Every Season (Ellie Topp and Margaret Howard, Macmillan Canada, 1997).

It was really straightforward. The only fussy part is packing the carrots tightly enough into the hot jars. I was using tongs, but I suspect there’s a better tool. I had to keep fighting the urge to reach bare-handed into the pot... it was a bit frustrating.

In any case, here’s the recipe. There were some carrots that didn't fit into the jars, so I already know it tastes pretty good; it's surprisingly highly flavoured. I'm going to hazard a guess that roots are good at absorbing liquids, and thus make good subjects for flavoured pickling. The nice thing is that, as long as one doesn’t vary the quantities of carrots, water and vinegar (5% acidity or more – check the label!), you can be really flexible with the flavourings. I wonder what vanilla carrots would be like? Or ginger-lime carrots? Or carrots with star anise?

Spicy Pickled Carrots

1. Sterilize four or five pint jars (500 mL).

2. Combine the following in a pot:

• 2 cups white wine vinegar (for flavour)
• 1 cup white vinegar (for frugality)
• 1.5 cups sugar
• 1 1/3 cups water
• 2 tsp pickling salt
• about ½ tsp each of whole coriander, black peppercorns, whole cloves, whole allspice, cardamom seeds and ground paprika (vary mixture to taste and according to what's around the kitchen)
• 1 whole dried hot pepper, crushed
• 1 knob of ginger, cut into small pieces
• 2 cinnamon sticks, broken into pieces
• 2 crushed bay leaves

3. Make sure sugar is well dissolved. Bring to a full boil. Then add:

• 8 cups carrots (=about 5 lbs of large carrots, peeled, trimmed at top and bottom, cut into sticks and cut in half)

4. Bring to a full rolling boil again. Remove from heat and pack carrots into warm, sterile jars. Cover with liquid, leaving appropriate head room. Seal and process the jars at a rolling boil in the canner for a full 10 minutes. If using quart jars (1 L), process for 15 minutes.