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When the first frosts unexpectedly occur at the beginning of autumn, most zealous owners are faced with the question: what to do with the unripe, almost green tomatoes hastily collected from the bushes? Indeed, at this time they often accumulate in quantity even more than ripe, red fruits, which can always be used for tomato paste.
It turns out that since ancient times it was green tomatoes that were pickled in large quantities for the winter in the most traditional way, using large wooden barrels and tubs. And in our time, this method has not lost its relevance, only now it is known more as a cold method of salting green tomatoes, and most often a very ordinary saucepan is used as a container.
Simple but effective recipe
There are quite a lot of recipes for making green tomatoes using cold salting. But among them, the simplest is the one that was most often used by our great-grandmothers and great-grandfathers and which will require minimal effort from you.
Each person will have their own individual quantity of tomatoes for pickling. But, for example, for 2 kg of tomatoes you need to prepare 2 liters of water for brine and 120-140 g of salt.
In this recipe, whole tomatoes are used, but for better soaking in brine, it is advisable to pierce each tomato with a needle in several places.
Spices are essential ingredients for any salting. To make it tasty, for this amount of tomatoes you need to prepare at least:
- Dill – 50 g;
- Garlic – 1 head;
- Cherry and black currant leaves - about 10 pieces;
- Oak and laurel leaves - 2-3 pieces each;
- Leaves and pieces of horseradish rhizome - several pieces;
- Black and allspice pepper – 3-4 peas each;
- A bunch of parsley, basil, celery, tarragon - whatever you find to suit your taste.
The pan can only be used with an enamel coating or stainless steel. It must be scalded with boiling water before use.
First, place some of the seasonings and herbs on the bottom of the pan so that they cover the entire bottom. Place the tomatoes, freed from the stems and stalks, quite tightly, placing them in layers of spices. On top, all tomatoes should also be completely covered with a layer of spices.
Using this method, tomatoes are filled with cold brine. But in order for the salt to dissolve well in it, it must be boiled and cooled in advance.
Pickled tomatoes should be kept in normal room conditions for a week and then placed in a cool place. They will be ready in about 3 weeks, although their flavor will only improve as they soak in the brine for two months.The most immature, completely green tomatoes take the longest to pickle. It is not recommended to touch them earlier than after 2 months.
If you have absolutely no conditions for ripening and storing tomatoes, you can carefully transfer them after a week into glass jars, cover with plastic lids and place in the refrigerator.
Interestingly, this recipe can be simplified even further by not preparing a special brine, but simply sprinkling the spiced tomatoes with the required amount of salt. After salting, you just need to cover the tomatoes with a lid and place a load on top in the form of a clean stone or a glass jar filled with water.
Recipe for those with a sweet tooth
The above spicy and sour recipe is universal, but many people like sweet and sour preparations. They will be interested in the following unique recipe using sugar and special seasonings.
To cold pickle green tomatoes in a saucepan using this recipe, you will need to prepare, in addition to the green tomatoes, some more ripe red tomatoes to make the filling.
To prepare green tomatoes with a total weight of 1 kg, you need to find:
- 0.4 kg of red tomatoes;
- 300 g sugar;
- 30 g salt;
- 50 grams of black currant leaves;
- A pinch of cinnamon;
- Several pieces of cloves;
- A few peas of black and allspice.
Cover the bottom of a pan scalded with boiling water with a continuous layer of blackcurrant leaves and add half of the other spices.Lay out clean green tomatoes in layers, sprinkling each layer with sugar. It is necessary that after placing all the tomatoes on top of the container there is at least 6-8 cm of free space left.
Then pass the red tomatoes through a meat grinder, add salt and the remaining sugar, and mix. Pour the resulting mixture over the stacked tomatoes. After they have been kept warm for 3-4 days, the pan with the preparation must be taken to a cold room.
Salted tomatoes with filling
Tomatoes are most often prepared using this recipe using the hot pour method with vinegar, but this does not mean that green tomatoes cannot be prepared in the same way using the cold method without vinegar. But such a workpiece should be stored in the refrigerator, if sterilization is not used.
For 5 kg of green tomatoes, prepare 1 kg of sweet pepper and onion, 200 g of garlic and a couple of hot pepper pods. It would be nice to add a few bunches of herbs: dill, parsley, cilantro, basil.
To prepare the brine, bring 30 grams of salt to a boil in 1 liter of water, add bay leaf, allspice and black pepper to your taste. The brine is cooled. As in previous recipes, the use of spices for pickling is welcome: dill inflorescences, oak leaves, cherries and currants, and perhaps also tarragon and savory.
To prepare the filling, both types of peppers, onions and garlic are chopped using a knife or meat grinder and lightly seasoned. Then each tomato is cut from the smooth side into 2, 4 or even 6 parts and a vegetable filling is placed inside it. Place tomatoes in layers with the filling facing up into a pan of the required size.Spicy herbs with spices are laid between the layers. The layers are compacted as much as possible so as not to crush the tomatoes.
Then they are filled with cold brine. A plate is placed on top without pressure, but the tomatoes must be completely hidden under the surface of the brine. In a warm place, it is enough for such a preparation to stand for about 3 days until the brine becomes cloudy. Then the tomatoes need to be put in the refrigerator.
If you don’t have any space in the refrigerator to store such a product, then you can do it differently. Immediately place the tomatoes in jars and after filling with brine, place the jars for sterilization. For liter jars, it is necessary to sterilize them for 15-20 minutes from the moment the water boils; three-liter jars need at least 30 minutes for complete sterilization. But green tomatoes prepared in this way can simply be stored in the pantry.
It seems that among the variety of recipes above, everyone will definitely find something that suits the taste or preferences of their household members.
