One of Les Gourmettes Cooking School’s longtime students, Marilyn, brought in a huge box of green tomatoes to share with the class. I brought home a couple of pounds of them myself. My lone remaining tomato plant yielded the three tomatoes with the stems that you see in the photo below.

I’ve posted the recipe for fried green tomatoes previously, so this time I’m turning them into the deli delicacy – pickled green tomatoes. If you love these crunchy, thick-walled, salty, sour, spicy treats as I do, just wait until you see how easy they are to make at home. If you want to learn a little more about the fried tomato recipe, it pairs really well with a fresh feta salad, especially during the BBQ season.

This “refrigerator pickle” technique is basically foolproof. No lengthy temperature-critical fermentation and no sterile canning (although the jars and lids need to be cleaned with boiling water first). And they must be kept refrigerated. The best part is that the refrigerator pickled green tomatoes remain crunchy. Pasteurized pickled green tomatoes get mushy.

It is important that the tomatoes are firm and completely green, with no bits of orange or red and no mushy green tomatoes! I have labeled four of the jars and will be giving them as Christmas gifts.

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