Brace yourself

I had intended for my first cooking post to be on my mother's "Famous Boneless Turkey". But the computer that has the pictures for it lobotomized itself and so I am doing pickled eggs instead.

Why Pickled Eggs??

My husband found the recipe on Mostly Cajun and decided he wanted to try it.

It turns out that making pickled eggs is actually quite fun once you get past your husband swearing at the eggs because they won't turn loose of their shells.

Here is the recipe as posted on Mostly Cajun:

hardboiled eggs
white vinegar
pickling spices
yellow onions (optional)
whole peppers (jalapeno, cayenne, tabasco, whatever, also optional)
Glass jars with lids. You can buy these at a good grocery, but we always used clean mayonnaise or other glass jars. We didn’t know we were “recycling".

Process:
Peel the eggs. Slice the onions. Wash the peppers.

Sterilize the jars by immersing them in a big pot of water and bringing it to a boil. If you’re using official canning lids (recommended) boil them too.

While you’re boiling things, bring a pot of vinegar to the boil, too. Don’t do this in an aluminum pot unless it has an intact teflon coating. Hot vinegar will react with aluminum. Produces hydrogen gas. Not enough to blow anything up, but I just thought you’d be interested.

Starting with a clean jar, insert a few eggs, some onions, peppers, a dose of pickling spice, and repeat until the jar is almost full. Fill the jar to just above the solid stuff with hot vinegar. Screw on the lid.

Repeat this process until you’re out of eggs, jars, vinegar, or patience.

Now comes the most difficult par tof the process: Wait at least two weeks. Some people say you should refrigerate them for this time. I’ve done it both ways, with and without refrigeration, and I’m still alive. It’s an old Cajun recipe, and old Cajuns didn’t have much refrigeration. Of course, I’ve skipped the “boil the jars” step, too. I’m just trying to be responsible, though, telling you to do it the full-blown, nanny-state way.

At the end of the two weeks, your eggs are ready. These things will improve with age, though, so make several jars, and at two weeks, start eating the first one. Just fish it out of the jar with a clean fork. Your nasty ol’ fingers will contaminate the rest. Use your fingers only if you’re planning on eating the whole jar…

Now since I can't leave well enough alone and saw this interesting container of "pickling salt" while shopping for jars at wally-world, I added salt to the pickling spice. I decided that a "dose" is about a teaspoon.

Here are our boiling eggs (we have no kids so no multicolored novelties).



Here is the first jar with the first layer of eggs and stuff.



Here are the three full jars we finished with, from the right they are Jalapeno, generic small red pepper, and generic small green pepper (I honestly don't know what they are).



We had a few eggs left over so we just dumped them into a jar with the rest of the onions, jalapenos, salt, pickling spice, and topped it off with vinegar.



They are currently sitting on a shelf in the kitchen, counting down to two weeks. This being our first effort at canning at home (I have till now done it with my mother or sisters at their homes) they have been getting a lot of attention.



I have been looking at them a bit differently the last two days though. I discovered that I may actually have a time-bomb sitting quietly on the shelf. My MIL has advised me that pickled eggs tend to have a deleterious effect on the male members of her family. To put it bluntly they produce gas, and I don't mean the basic "pew" variety gas, but the "hold onto your hats, roll the windows down, and hope we can outrun it" variety.

Check back in two weeks, I let you know how big the bang was.