Pickled Okra

Kate and I wanted to try pickling, so we started with the Pickled Okra recipe from The Southern Foodways Alliance’s Community Cookbook, a book that I worked on and that will be available to purchase soon.
Kate found some beautiful purple okra, and I got my standard okra at Your DeKalb Farmers Market, since my okra plants produced very, very little (specifically: three okra pods). We put them in pint jars with dill, garlic, and a sliver of hot pepper, then worked on the brine.

When we added the brine, the purple leached out of Kate’s okra into the brine, and though I think she was disappointed that the okra turned green, the brine was a gorgeous magenta color.

Next time I make it I will put more okra in each jar so that there isn’t a lot of empty space for brine–I had to make a second recipe to fill the jars because there wasn’t enough okra displacing space.
The okra looks lovely, but I can’t say how it turned out because I haven’t tried it yet! I keep hoping to devil eggs then put a slice of the pickled okra on top, but I don’t get many opportunities to play in the kitchen these days. As it was, Kate and Doug had to do most of the pickling. But I got to do enough to learn a bit about it. I can’t wait to try more of the recipes in the book. My next pickling project: watermelon rinds. Maybe next year.