Easy Refrigerator Pickled Okra

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In the south, okra is a staple food. It’s super easy to grow in the summer heat and its delicious in many different ways. Have you tried pickled okra? We love it! There are so many yummy vegetables to pickle, you’re going to love them all.

Okra is one of the easiest garden vegetables to grow, so making easy refrigerator pickled okra is bomb. Check out how to grow okra here. If you live in a really hot summer climate, it will do spectacularly. It will not grow well in a cool place.

Once you plant your okra seeds and they germinate, they won’t really take off and grow well until it’s really hot.

Making refrigerator pickles is so easy and takes just a few minutes, but it can preserve your garden produce for months. I love pickling a bunch of vegetables at the end of the garden season.

I store the jars in the back of my refrigerator and pull out one at a time all throughout the fall. I can still enjoy the fresh vegetables we grew until Christmas time or even longer. I love saving food that way.

Picked okra recipe without canning

We don’t can food because we’re not allowed to feed the daycare kids home-canned foods, so we come up with other ways to preserve food like freezing, dehydrating, and refrigerator pickling. This technique is simple and just takes a few ingredients. For more ways to preserve your garden produce without canning, click here.

First, you make a simple brine, which the recipe for is included below. Then you allow it to cool and pack your jars full with okra. I like to use the smaller pods because they are more tender.

The okra pictured in this article is Star of David okra so it’s fatter than what you usually see. We save seeds and sell them to raise money for our preschool garden. You can see the listing by clicking on the highlighted link.

We prefer Star of David because it has a better flavor and is slightly less slimy in texture. I love the fatter pods because it’s easier to make more food for all these hungry kids!

Once you have your jars packed as full as you can get them, you add the brine and then the lid. Easy peasy. It’s one of the simplest ways to prepare food.

Easy pickled okra

This refrigerator pickled okra will last 3-6 months in the refrigerator. The vinegar keeps them from collecting bacteria, so you can enjoy them for a long time. 

Easy pickled okra refrigerator spicy

If you want to add a little spice to your pickled okra, all you have to do is add some hot peppers. 

You can use jalapenos, habaneros, or whatever kind of peppers you have on hand or enjoy eating. Just take your knife and poke a hole through the whole washed pepper. Stab it all the way through so the juice can permeate it from both sides. And push it down into the jar with the other ingredients.

It will spice the liquid and everything in it. If you want a lot of spice, add several peppers and if you want a little, just add one.

Fermented okra

Okra can be fermented in a similar way. You can use the same recipe but use filtered water. Fermenting vegetables gives them another layer of benefits such as probiotics for gut health that comes from fermentation.

For more ideas on what to do with excess okra from the garden, check this article. 

Once you’ve made your pickled okra, what do you do with it? You can eat it from the jar just like regular pickles and we do that a lot. But it can also be served as a side dish. We do that a lot too. It’s gorgeous on a cru de te or on a charcuterie board.

You can also put the smaller ones on a skewer with some cheese cubes and even ham cubes for a great little appetizer your guests can grab with their hands.

Pickled okra is super healthy. Okra is full of nutrients such as vitamin c and k. It’s also full of fiber which helps regulate blood sugar and with digestion. In addition, the slimy texture in the okra binds impurities in the body and removes them as well as cholesterol from the body.

Refrigerator pickled vegetable recipes:

• Refrigerator pickles are a great stand by to make out of your excess cucumbers.
• Dilly beans are pickled tangy green beans.
• Spicy dilly beans are an even more flavorful version of dilly beans if you love spice!
• Pickled cherry tomatoes are a pop of glorious tangy tomato heaven!

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