Love Your Gluts

Make the most of the season’s bounty with Adam Frost’s simple guide to preserving your homegrown harvest to enjoy in the months ahead.

Few things are more satisfying than growing your own fruit and veg, to pick and take straight to the kitchen. But there can come a time, usually about now, when you’ve got more produce than you know what to do with. And that’s when Mrs Frost and I start preserving, pickling and storing.

I’ve always loved cooking – I even thought about doing it for a living when I left school – so I find preserving great fun, with the bonus of having homegrown produce to enjoy during winter. It’s also a perfect way to stop anything going to waste. At home, we also love choosing a jar of pickled or preserved produce to pep up a meal – Mrs Frost even had personalised labels made!

There are lots of ways to store and preserve your produce, whether you want something sweet, savoury or even boozy! The methods aren’t difficult, and you don’t need professional kit. You’ll be amazed at the range of fruits and veggies you can continue to enjoy after they’ve finished growing in your garden.

Pickling more than peppers

Pickling produce is inexpensive and easy to do. It can be a sweet or savoury pickle, depending on the recipe, and you can use no end of different fruit and veg. These jars of delicious preserved goodies aren’t just for a ploughman’s lunch – they taste great added to soups, stews and curries, and work just as well with fish as they do with meat.

Vinegar with salt, or sugar, are the main ingredients used to pickle your fruit or veg, but you can also add other herbs and spices − such as corriander and mustard seeds, black pepper, ginger, cloves and bay leaf − to bring more flavour. Here, I’m pickling chillies, but you can pickle almost anything, including beans, cabbage, cucumber, damsons, fennel, garlic, onions and pears.