The pickling is a technique to conserve food using salt and vinegar. Salt prevents the growth of bad microorganisms and allows the good ones to grow and to preserve the food. It also keeps the vegetables crunchy. Vinegar plays the same role. In the Romanian recipes of muraturi (pickled fruits and vegetables), we usually find a brine made with vinegar and herbs.
Lot and lot of chillies, sweet or hot, are grown in Popesti.We eat some fresh from the plant, but most of the production is transformed. The ardei in otet are always served when we eat ciorba (sour soup) and when it’s homemade, it’s even better! Here is another fast-and-easy-to-make recipe from Sorin.
Ingredients
Mason jars
Fresh chilli
White vinegar
Coarse salt
Sugar
In a mason jar, washed and sterilized, add the chillies standing up, with or without stem. Pack them tight..
In a bowl, mix:
1 gal. of water
2.6 pt of vinegar
5 tsp of coarse salt
2 tsp of sugar
Mix well to dissolve the salt and the sugar.
Pour in the mason jar until the chillies are covered. Close the jar.
To eat after a month. Can be kept for a year.