Kitchen Garden Forum

Just returned from a fortnight's holiday and discovered my gherkins have grown to the size of cucumbers. The biggest weighs in in at 1 lb 6 oz,and the rest are not much smaller. I was planning to make some more dill pickled gherkins but at this size I expect they are only fit for the compost heap as they're big to slice up and be palatable I suspect. This is the first time I've grown them so any ideas what else I might be able to do with them apart from leaving them michieviously leaving them on a neighbours doorstep and letting them try and guess what they are (Courgettes grown into marrows I can find a use for but these monstrosities are really taxing my ingenuity,)

I'm not fond of cucumber but my wife loves them but she composts the escaped gherkins so I suspect that is all you can do with them.

Cucumber and mint soup was how my mum would use up overgrown cucumbers. I don't know her exact recipe, but here's one that seems close to it. We would always eat it hot, though. Very nice.

Primrose, I remember from my childhood (and I have never tried this myself!) my mother pickling cucumbers in chunks - peeled, the seeds removed and cut into small pieces - as you would whole gherkins, together with dill. I think one can also buy these in East European specialist shops. Maybe it's worth doing that?

I may give it a try, We are still experimenting trying to get the dill pickle vinegar mixture right to resemble the Eastern European ones you can buy in the shops. it was so big that it has completely exhausted the plant on which it was growing, which has now given up the ghost! To be honest it,s the size of a decent butternut squash. I can't imagine that the quality will be very good even if it would have won Biggest gherkin in Show award!

I found a recipe for "Polish cucumbers" in my mother's old recipe book and have put a translation on it in the "Recipe" section of the forum. I have never tried it!

I wonder if that gives Ric(h)ard a clue to his pickling question?

That,s an interesting pickle recipe Monika. I've never come across one where the liquid is added for a short period of time, then removed and mixed again. I wonder how it affects the texture of what is being pickled. It's I the resting that some pickling recipes use hot vinegar and some cold. Whenever I've pickled onions previously I've always let the vinegar cool before adding on the basis that heat would partially cook them and make them less crunchy. The one time I did use hot vinegar the onions went very pappy and I ended up throwing them away. I guess it depends on how you like the texture of your pickles.