Japanese Style Pickles

If you Google "Japanese Pickle Recipes" there are a number which use rice vinegar, salt, and sugar - seems to form the basis of Japanese pickle making and I look forward to a lot more exploration.  But for now, I started with a recipe for soy/ginger pickled cucumber spears.  That's nor what I made, of course but it is where I started.

The recipe called for pickling cucumber spears and fresh ginger slices in a marinade of rice vinegar, soy sauce, sugar, and toasted sesame oil.  I used a sliced seedless cucumber rather than spears and used some pickled ginger strips which we had picked up at the Asian market in Philly.  These are definitely ginger but not really very tasty, useful for adding to other things but not something you would want to eat by itself.  I substituted apple cider vinegar for rice vinegar because that's what I had and honey for sugar because I prefer it.

The pickling brine consists of
1/3 c. vinegar
1/3 c. soy sauce (I used Kikkomen's)
2 T. sugar (I used honey)
1/4 t. Toasted Sesame Oil



Slice the cuc's and ginger as you want them,

1. Put soy sauce, rice vinegar, sugar and toasted sesame oil in a bowl and stir until sugar has dissolved.
2. Put cucumber and ginger in a ziploc bag and pour vinegar mix on top. Removed air before sealing the bag. Once sealed, lightly massage the cucumber and ginger, making sure the pickling liquid evenly coats all the vegetables.
3. Refrigerate for at least 2 hours and for no more than 12. Drain pickling vinegar and keep the cucumber and ginger pickles in the fridge.

I saved the brine and used it for another batch.

This is about as easy as it gets and the pickles were awesome!