The Swedish Västeråsgurka is a late summer harvest. Often turned into a delicious pickle for sandwiches, we hope this year´s harvest will make enough jars to find their way to the Christmas table.
Text Photo & Video © JE Nilsson & CM Cordeiro 2020
It´s rewarding to see your spring planting efforts bloom and fruit. This year´s growing was alright. There was a short strawberry season, literally lasting about a month when we could get strawberries from the garden. But the tomatoes and Västeråsgurka (a variety of cucumbers known to grow in Västerås, Sweden) are still growing, and we get small harvests now and again.
This batch was pickled and jarred. The recipe to Swedish pickled cucumbers are pretty standard household recipes that you can find on the internet and in cookbooks.
Ingredients to pickled cucumber, Swedish style
1 kg Västerås cucumbers
1 liter water
1 dl salt
2 dl vinegar (12%)
4 dl sugar
6 dl water
2 tbsp white mustard seeds
Crown dill
The process from harvest to jarred pickled cucumber is about an hour. You wash the cucumbers and slice them evenly. Combine the 1L of water and salt in a container and place the cucumbers in the container. Cover and let stand in the refrigerator for at least 12 hours, this will keep your cucumbers crisp after pickling. With the rest of the water, combine with sugar, vinegar and mustard seeds in a pot. Warm the pot till the sugar dissolves. There is no need to boil the mixture. Set aside to cool whilst sterilizing your jars to be filled. Bring out the chilled cucumber slices and strain. Place the chilled and lightly salted cucumber slice sin the jars, interlayering with crown dill. We added here, pepperrot or horseraddish root to the pickling jars too. It gives a wonderful twist of warm heat and spice to the autumn and winter meals. Fill with the pickling mixture, lid the jar and store in a cool place in your pantry.
Pepperrot from the garden.
Pickling mixture.
