Pickled cucumbers are one of the most popular winter preparations. Canned vegetables are stored for a long time, during cooking they become crispy and acquire a pleasant taste. Cucumbers with the addition of French mustard are an unusual dish in which the sweetish marinade has spicy notes with a hint of heat that are transferred to the vegetables. This preparation can be eaten as an independent dish, as an addition to side dishes or on sandwiches.
Features of pickling cucumbers with French mustard for the winter
Pickling allows you to keep cucumbers fit for consumption for a long time. A special feature of preparing cucumbers with French mustard for the winter is that the vegetables are placed in jars not whole, but cut into pieces. This preparation can shorten the shelf life of vegetables.
To keep the product longer, the empty container and the finished dish are sterilized, and vinegar is added to the marinade. Garlic and horseradish also have good preservative properties.
Recipe Ingredients Required
To prepare the dish you need:
- cucumbers – 2.5 kg;
- water – 1.2 l;
- vinegar 9% – 300 ml;
- sugar – 1 glass;
- salt – 3 tbsp. l.;
- French mustard - 6 tbsp. l.;
- allspice peas – 10 pcs.;
- mustard seeds – 2.5 tsp;
- black peppercorns – 25 pcs.;
- garlic – 5 cloves;
- horseradish root – 1/2 pcs.;
- dill umbrellas – 5 pcs.
Product selection rules
Cucumbers must be fresh, without signs of rot or damage. It is advisable to use young, not overripe vegetables for preservation.
Before cooking, you can put them in cold water and leave them for 6 hours to make them crispier.
How to prepare the container?
Cucumbers should be pickled in glass jars with a tight-fitting lid. They should not have cracks or chips.
The containers are washed under hot running water with soap and soda, then rinsed and dried. Place clean jars, neck down, on a wire rack set over a pan of simmering water. The time during which steam sterilization is carried out is 15 minutes, after which the fire is turned off and the container is left to cool in the same position on the wire rack. The cooled jars are transferred, without turning them over, onto a clean towel.
The lids are sterilized over steam together with the jars or boiled separately. Sterilized lids are moved with tweezers onto a clean towel.
Cooking process
Cucumbers are washed and cut into 4 parts. Allspice and black pepper, mustard seeds and dill umbrellas are placed at the bottom of the jars. Garlic and horseradish are peeled and also placed in containers. Sliced cucumbers are placed on top of the spices.
To prepare the marinade, mix water, vinegar, sugar, salt and French mustard. The resulting solution is poured cold into jars of vegetables.
Cover the containers with lids and place them in a pan of water placed on the fire. To prevent the jars from slipping, you can lay a towel on the bottom of the pan. Sterilization of workpieces is carried out for 10 minutes with low boiling water.
The jars sterilized in this way are rolled up and turned upside down. You can cover them with a blanket or thick towel to help them cool down more slowly. After the jars have cooled completely, they are turned over and stored.
Terms and conditions of storage of pickled cucumbers
The workpiece should be stored in a place protected from light, at a low temperature. You can use a pantry, cellar or basement for these purposes. It is necessary to ensure that the jars with cucumbers are not exposed to the sun.
It is important to remember that closed jars can be stored at room temperature, but open ones must be moved to the refrigerator. The shelf life of a closed product is about 1 year, open (if stored in the refrigerator) - up to 1 week. At room temperature, open jars remain edible for no more than 2-3 days.
