Minimise Your Food Waste with Pickling Cooking Class in Sydney

Stop getting yourself in a pickle over food wastage and try out these cooking classes in Sydney. Guided by local chefs, you’ll learn the insider tips to pickling and a range of your favourite groceries so that they last longer while tasting just as delicious! From sauerkraut recipes to learning how to make kimchi, cooking classes in Sydney are a great way to get started on this fun, sustainable food journey.  

The method of pickling has been around for thousands of years and is currently undergoing a big resurgence. We can think of three main reasons why: it's a great way to reduce your food waste, the end results are packed with health benefits, and pickled foods taste amazing too!

If you've never tried pickling at home you can sign up for one of our hands-on cooking classes in Sydney where you'll learn all about the processes involved and leave with your own jar of handmade pickles. If you're new to the pickling technique, here's a simple breakdown. 

What is pickling?

Pickling is a natural process that has been used for thousands of years to preserve food for long periods of time. The process involves soaking produce in brine or an acid solution which draws out the water and prevents bad bacteria from growing. This process changes the taste and texture of the produce and leaves it with a somewhat tangy flavour. 

If you’re looking for sustainable things to do in Sydney, pickling classes are a great way to do your bit for the planet. Change up your team building activities with one of these Sydney workshops and get your whole crew behind this fun food preservation movement! 

Depending on the type of food you’re wanting to preserve, there are a few different pickling techniques. These include:

Quick Pickles

The fastest way to pickle something is to cook the item and drain it of colour. Once completed the product is placed in jars containing a liquid substance made up of vinegar, sugar, salt, and spices. This method is used for produce like cucumbers, cauliflower, carrots, chilli, different beans, and crab apples.

Salt (Brine or Dry)

Any product that can have the liquid pulled from it is ideal for this method of pickling. This method involves rinsing the vegetable, cutting and trimming it, before tossing salt onto it and placing it in salt brine and leaving it to pickle for up to a day. This method is ideal for eggplant, zucchini, cucumbers, and cabbage.

Vinegar

Vinegar brining is exactly the same as salt brining and draws out the water from an item. However, there are several stages to this method. The produce is placed in vinegar and left to soak for a number of days. The method is used on mostly fruit like watermelon rinds and cucumbers.

What Can Be Pickled?

Now, you’re probably wondering what foods can be pickled. Well, you’d be surprised at the number of foods that can go through the pickling process successfully. Most fruit and vegetables can be pickled, and you can even pickle animal parts like pig’s feet! 

Common food groups that can be pickled include fruits like lemons, grapes, watermelon rinds, pears and red tomatoes, meat like corned beef and pork, vegetables such as pumpkin, cabbage, beans, eggplant and carrots and even seafood such as prawns and herring!

How to make your own pickles

When you're thinking about which items in your pantry you should pickle, you only really need to keep two key things in mind: 

Choose your produce but think small

When you begin to consider what you want to pickle, you need to think about if it will be crunchy enough and how small it needs to be. Choose vegetables or fruits that are firm like apples or carrots. If you choose small products, they’ll be easier to cut and will pickle faster. Just be sure to cut off stems and leaves.

Jars and brine

It’s important to have something to store your pickling produce in. You’ll need a jar to store to them in, and the best type of container to use is a mason jar. A basic pickling liquid could include:

• 3 cups white or apple cider vinegar

• 3 cups water

• ¼ cup sea salt

• ¼ cup sugar (for sweet pickles)

• Two to four dried hot chillies (for spicy pickles)

• Dried herbs and spices (mustard seed, celery seed, bay leaf, peppercorn)

Put the items in the jar pour in the brine, close the lid and wait! Your pickled produce should be ready in about a day to a week depending on how much product there is.

Loving these recipe ideas? Read our secret recipe for team building success here. 

Where you can go to learn how to pickle in Sydney

Curious about where you can go to try out these must do Sydney activities? Join Marcea Klein for her fermentation and pickling class at Sydney Community in Rozelle and learn how to pickle with miso try your hand at pickling a variety of vegetables in a salt brine at this fantastically fun ferments class in Balmain or discover how to make sauerkraut, kimchi and more with Cornersmith in Potts Point. 

5 fun facts about pickles:

1. Cleopatra is believed to have praised pickles for being one of her top beauty secrets. 

2. Pickles are credited for the sailors on Christopher Columbus’s 1492 voyage not getting scurvy.

3. Sweet pickles are made by dunking dill pickles in strong kool-aid

4. Napoleon loved pickles. He issued a $250k reward for anyone who could invent the best technique for preserving and pickling food that were to be given to the army of troops.

5. Shakespeare’s play, The Tempest is credited for introducing the phrase "in a pickle".