…..watermelon pickles. I made me up a jar for the fridge. Gotta wait a couple days now, then its dig in time.
Pretty easy recipe.
For the brine:
1 cup of cider vinegar
1 1/2 cups of white sugar
1 tablespoon of whole cloves
I “larger than a thumb” size piece of ginger root, peeled and sliced into quarter thick slices.
Simmer this brine for about twenty minutes. You don’t want it boiling, just a nice simmer. Cover and set aside after removing from heat. I make my brine the day before and allow it to sit on the stove cold and covered , then strain just before its needed.
Cut rind into strips about 3/4″ and remove outer rind and trim the meat to within about 1/8″ of the white. Cut into squares. In a bowl large enough to hold the rinds cover with a thin layerof canning salt, cover and put in the fridge for 12 hours. Drain juice and rinse the bowl to get residual salt out then soak the rinds in several soaks of cold water to get the saltiness of the rinds. A good test is to dip a finger in the soak water after the rinds have been in a while to see if the water is salty and just able to taste salt….this is what you want. Cover with cold water in a sauce pan and simmer until the white portion of the rinds is translucent. Drain.
Put the rinds in the same pan that the brine was in and then add the brine back to the rinds, cover and heat back up to a simmer while the jars are washed and lids are being simmered in a shallow pan. When the rinds are very hot spoon them into the washed jars and apply a lid to each jar as its filled, leaving the heat on the rinds until the last jar is filled.
I put these up in a pint jar because they won’t last long enough to fiddle with the 1/2 pint jars I usually make for give-away.