Thin lemon slices steeped a day in a hot, sweet white-wine-vinegar brine until the rind turns tender enough to eat: a pure vinegar pickle, with no salt cure and no oil.
Untested: not yet made in this kitchen. It is adapted from the source named in the Notes.
Ingredients
- ⅔ cup white wine vinegar
- ⅔ cup water
- ½ cup packed brown sugar
- ¼ teaspoon kosher salt
- 1 lemon, thinly sliced and seeded
Directions
Key ingredients
- In a small saucepan over high heat, bring the vinegar, water, brown sugar and salt to a boil, stirring until the sugar dissolves.
- Take the pan off the heat, stir in the lemon slices, and leave them in the brine at room temperature for 1 day, until the rinds are tender.
- Move the slices and their brine to a clean jar, keeping the slices covered by the liquid, and refrigerate. Quarter the slices to serve; a spoonful of the brine is good in a vinaigrette.
Notes
Source Adapted from chef Ash Heeger’s pickled lemons in “Octopus Salad With Pickled Lemons,” Saveur (2017), where they are one part of the salad and a tablespoon of the pickling liquid goes into its dressing. The water appears only in the source’s method, not its ingredient list. The source gives no storage instruction or keeping time; moving the slices to the refrigerator after the day’s rest is this collection’s addition. Double or triple the brine for more lemons.
A vinegar pickle, not a salt cure This is the pure vinegar-brine version. The collection’s other lemon pickle, Pickled Lemons (Nimbu ka Achaar, Indian Lemon Pickle), salts the lemons first; Moroccan preserved lemons are a salt cure with no vinegar at all. No tested home-canning process exists for pickled lemons (the National Center for Home Food Preservation publishes none), so keep these in the refrigerator.
The photo The photograph is a stand-in: whole lemons in a brine jar under a cloth cover, not these vinegar-pickled slices.