Home › Pickles and Catsups › Pickled Nasturtiums
Pickled Nasturtiums
Use the green seed, and in pickling retain a short length of stem on each. Lay them in cold salted water for two days, and then place them in cold water for another day. Drain well and place the seed in a glass jar, cover with vinegar heated to the boiling point, and close the jar tightly. In a few days the seeds will be ready to use. They are an excellent substitute for capers.
A straightforward vinegar pickle whose only real variables — the strength of the brine and the strength of the vinegar — the original leaves unstated. Both matter.
- Pick the pods at the right stageUse the green seed pods that form as the flowers drop, while they are still plump, firm and bright green. Once they yellow or begin to dry they turn woody and no amount of pickling will soften them.
- The salt waterNo proportion is given. A standard brine of about 1/4 cup pickling or kosher salt per quart of water would suit here; avoid iodized table salt, whose additives can cloud the liquid.
- Why the plain water soakThe day in fresh cold water after the two days of brine draws out excess salt. Skip it and the finished pickle is aggressively salty, since the pods are eaten whole and by the spoonful.
- Vinegar strengthUse a commercial vinegar of 5 percent acidity — cider or white wine both suit the peppery, mustardy flavor. Diluted or homemade vinegar of unknown strength is not a safe medium for a pickle kept any length of time.
- Hot vinegar, cold jarPour the boiling vinegar over the drained seeds in a warmed jar. A cold glass jar can crack. Leave about half an inch of headspace and be sure the seeds stay submerged.
- StorageSealing a hot jar and letting it cool is not a canning process, whatever the lid does as it contracts. Treat this as a refrigerator pickle and keep it cold; it holds for months and the flavor improves after the first few weeks.
- The stemsThe short length of stem left on each pod is practical rather than decorative: it gives something to lift the seed out with.
- Using themSwap them for capers one for one in tartar sauce, brown butter for fish, or on a dressed salad, but expect more heat and less floral perfume.
Nasturtium (Tropaeolum majus) is a South American plant, native to the Andes and carried to European gardens from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries onward; the name is borrowed from the unrelated cresses and is generally traced to the Latin for "nose-twist," a reference to the sharp mustard-oil bite the two plants share. Pickling the green seed as a caper substitute is an old kitchen-garden economy in England and America: true capers are the buds of a Mediterranean shrub, imported and expensive, while nasturtiums grew freely in any dooryard and produced far more seed than anyone wanted to save. Its appearance in the Butterick book — a general household volume issued by a pattern company for a broad middle-class readership — puts it squarely in the tradition of pickle chapters that turned garden surplus into pantry stock, alongside the green tomatoes, nasturtium buds and unripe walnuts pickled for the same reason.