Social Pickle’s Quick Guide to Pickling

We Social Pickles love foraging, but what to do with all the beautiful things you’ve picked?

Pickling is a great way to preserve things you have foraged from around the city. It’s like a delicious time capsule. When we open a jar we made earlier in the year, it’s not only a tasty and fun addition to a meal in less sunny times – it comes with the memories of when it was picked.

Here’s a basic pickling liquor recipe that you can use to pickle most fruits or vegetables. We’ve given some suggestions for different plants and flowers you can pickle. Some might sound odd but they do really work, especially when they’re at the bud stage.

Fun flowery things that can be pickled:

• Magnolia petals (These taste quite a lot like ginger. They’re also nice in their raw state.)
• Wild garlic buds or flowers
• Elderflower buds or flowers
• Currant blossom
• Linden flowers
• Rose petals
• Cherry blossom
• Fennel flowers

Not all flowers are edible. If there are some you want to try that we haven’t listed here, make sure you look them up first. If you’re in any doubt at all about identification, don’t eat them.

A great resource for wild plants is this guide from Wild Food UK. It doesn’t have loads of flowers listed on it, but it’s very useful for foraging nonetheless.

This liquor should cover about 500g of whatever you’re pickling. A good thing to do is to pack your to-be pickles in the sterilized vessel you’ll be keeping them in, then fill it up with water, tip it out and measure the water.

The ratio is roughly 50:50 water to vinegar, with a little extra space for sugar, salt and spices. You can adapt the amounts above to suit whatever size vessel or amount of pickles you want to make.

Using a sterilised jar is key. Here's how to sterilise.