Pickled Peppers

I like spicy food, but I usually have this problem when I buy Thai chili peppers. They're sold in packages that come with too many for what I need. Especially that I usually cook for myself. I’m trying to cook in a way that reduces waste. This came out of a few attempts to reverse engineer a lot of pickled peppers that I find at the grocery store and really it’s just taking a glance at the ingredient label to find what’s in them. The only addition I made is adding a tiny amount of MSG just to make the brine taste better. I got the idea of doing this since lots of umeboshi has added MSG to the pickling process.

Unlike many commercially sold pickled peppers, this brine is pretty mild so you need to store these in the fridge. Anytime I buy a package of Thai peppers, I’ll wash and prep them and toss them into my pickling jar for them. It takes a while for the brine to permeate into the peppers, so even about a week or two after they go into the jar, they will still taste pretty fresh and not pickled yet.

The more you make this, and remember the taste of the brine, you should remember to add more brine to keep refreshing it and making sure the salt content doesn’t get too low. It’s a small jar, so honestly, after about every 2-3 batches of peppers that go in, I just add more of what I need to make the brine taste similar to a fresh one.

Recipe:

Thai peppers
Water
Vinegar (white distilled or rice)
Salt
MSG

Wash and pluck out any stems from the peppers and place them in a clean jar. If you find any bruised parts, you can break them off and discard them too.

In many cases this is called a 2.5% brine, but I’m adding vinegar and of the total weight of liquid, I like a 33% vinegar solution to taste pretty good.

In a pitcher or large measuring cup, measure out by grams, 1 part vinegar and 2 parts water. So for example, if you have a total of 1000g. of brine, 333g. will be vinegar, and 667g. will be water.

Whatever total weight of liquid you have from the step above, calculate 2.5% by weight and add this in salt. So for the example above, with 1000g. of combined vinegar and water, add 25g. in salt. Add a pinch of MSG and stir to dissolve.

With the jar of peppers, top it off with brine and store it in the fridge. The peppers are good for immediate use or store them for months on end.