How Do You Make Pickled Peppers?

One of my favorite ways to use up a bunch of peppers is to quick pickle them. While they wont last for months like a real pickle, they make for a delightfully crispy side that straddles the line between salad and pickle.

Most pickle brines consist of salt and sugar dissolved in some kind of acid. The balance depends on your personal tastes as well as how long you want the pickles to last. I like quick pickling sweet bell peppers in a mild brine because they have a surprisingly delicate flavor that easily disappears when pickled in pungent vinegar.

Citrus fruit provides the perfect level of acidity while providing a wonderful fruity counterpoint to the sweet vegetable. For this quick pickle Ive used grapefruit in the brine because of its sweetness and mellow bitterness. The Meyer lemon juice boosts the acidity without any harsh vinegar notes, and it also contributes its own floral fragrance.

The best part about a quick pickle though is its speed. In about eight hours, youll have a jar full of crisp flavorful peppers that are mildly sweet and pleasantly tangy. If youre in a rush, you can massage the peppers in the brine to make them ready to eat almost instantly.

Tip: Most chefs will chop the top and bottom off the bell peppers to save time and allow for uniformly shaped sticks, I find this incredibly wasteful as you lose about 1/4 of the pepper by doing this. Thats why I like slicing the pepper into segments, detaching the core, and then removing the membranes before slicing them up.