Blog - Cooking On The Ranch

Easy Quick Pickled Strawberries

June 5, 2021 By Lea Ann Brown 8 Comments

Give pickled strawberries a try! There’s no canning involved. When strawberries are pickled in a hot mixture of vinegar, sugar, salt and pickling spices they go from strawberry sweet to strawberry sweet, bright and tangy. Pickled strawberries are a beautiful topping for salads, cheese and even grilled pork loin roast.

chopped pickled strawberries over grilled pork loin roast with a side salad

What You Can Expect From This Recipe

Pickling strawberries is an unexpected way to use up some of those fresh strawberries. With an end flavor result of sweet, tart and tangy they’re hard to stop eating.

Stunning, simple and a conversation starter, they are spectacular on pork, lovely with cheese and a perfect salad topper.

This pickled strawberry recipe is a no-canning recipe, and super easy to make, let’s take a look.

I’ve always enjoyed pickling, but before Culinary School, my repertoire was limited to more predictable things like my Spicy Pickles and Pickled Beets. So where did I learn to pickle strawberries?

During cherry season, one of the Chef Instructors gave us the project to pickle cherries for a charcuterie board. During the demonstration, he became so wound up and enthusiastic about fermenting, and what to pickle, he stopped his sentence short and stated, “just pickle every damn thing you have.” It was endearing and it was totally inspiring.

Since that day, I’ve pickled pineapple and my latest adventure pickled strawberries.

Ingredients You’ll Need

Ingredients needed to make pickled strawberries

1 pint fresh strawberries: Tops sliced off
White wine vinegar
Cumin Seed
Honey
Kosher Salt
Peppercorns
Coriander Seeds
Mustard Seeds: Yellow Mustard Seeds

Ingredient Swaps and Substitutions

Vinegar: Don’t have white wine vinegar? Plain white vinegar is always a great choice for pickling. And if you have Champagne Vinegar, even better yet.
Honey: If you don’t have honey, but have a bottle of Agave Nectar, you can substitute. You can also substitute sugar in place of honey.
Peppercorns: Delicate in color, Pink Peppercorns are a very good choice to substitute for black peppercorns. They’re a little big milder, sweeter and fruitier.
Mustard Seeds: Black Mustard Seeds can be used in this recipe. The flavor of black mustard seeds is a bit more pungent.

How To Make Pickled Strawberries, It’s Easy

Sliced strawberries in pickling brine in a shallow white bowl

Step 1: Cut the green tops off the strawberries and slice them in half.
Step 2: Place the strawberries in a shallow wide bowl. You’ll need a bowl that will allow the strawberries to be covered in the pickling brine.
Step 3: In a small saucepan, combine the vinegar, honey, salt, mustard seed, peppercorns and coriander seeds over high heat. Stir to combine.
Step 4: As soon as mixture boils, it’s done cooking. Turn off heat immediately, don’t let is boil over. Let steep for ten minutes.
Step 5: When pickling liquid is room temperature, pour over strawberries.

Cover and chill for at least two hours or up to 24 hours. Store them in a glass jar, so that every time you open the refrigerator you can gaze at these beautiful berries.

Questions You Might Have

Can I Add Other Fruit?

Add a handful of blueberries to the strawberries before pouring on the pickling brine. The blue and red colors will be outstanding.

How Long Will Pickled Strawberries Last?

Store them covered in the refrigerator. They’ll last about a week.

More Uses For Pickled Strawberries

Now that you’ve got them, here’s what to do with pickled strawberries.

Bruschetta: Use a serrated knife to slice a baguette into ½ inch slices. Brush the slices with olive oil using a silicone basting brush. Toast the baguette slices under your oven broiler until golden brown. Slather on some cream cheese and top with a couple of pickled strawberries.
Use them on top of a simple tossed green salad.
Spread a bit of blue cheese on a cracker and top with a pickled strawberry.
Make a Pickled Strawberry Vinaigrette: four tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil, two tablespoons pickled strawberry brine, one teaspoon honey, salt and pepper. Whisk until blended.
Add a small bowl of pickled strawberries to your next charcuterie board.

Grilled pork loin roast topped with strawberries and served with a side salad

I highly encourage you to give pickles strawberries a try. You’ll fall in love. The bring an unexpected pop of sweet vinegar goodness to any way you decide to use them.

Pickled Pineapple
Best Spicy Pickles Made from Store Bought Dills
Mexican Pickled Onions
Pickled Beets

This recipe is adapted from Wine Spectator Magazine, which also gave me the idea to serve them over grilled pork roast.

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Pickled strawberries served over sliced pork roast.

Print Recipe

5 from 2 votes

Quick Pickled Strawberries

Pickling strawberries takes them from strawberry sweet, to tangy, bright and sweet. Use these as a topping for pork, or on a cracker with cream cheese.

Prep Time10

Cook Time12

resting time2

Course: Main Course Pork

Cuisine: America

Servings:

Calories: 434kcal

Author: Lea Ann Brown

Ingredients

For The Pickled Strawberries
1 cup White Vinegar Champagne, or White Wine Vinegar
½ cup honey
1 teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon mustard seeds or grainy mustard
½ teaspoon whole peppercorns
½ teaspoon coriander seeds
1 pint Fresh strawberries ¾ pound, 12 – 16 fresh strawberries
For The Pork Roast
1 pound pork loin roast or pork tenderloin
¼ cup butter or ghee
½ teaspoon dried rosemary or 1 sprig fresh, needles removed
1 teaspoon dried thyme or 2 – 3 springs fresh, leaves removed

Instructions

In a small saucepan, combine the vinegar, honey, salt, mustard seed, peppercorns and coriander seeds over high heat. Stir to combine.
As soon as mixture boils, turn off heat. Let steep for 10 minutes.
Trim ends from strawberries, and place strawberries in a small bowl. When pickling liquid is room temperature, pour over strawberries. Cover and chill for at least 2 hours and up to 24 hours.
For The Grilled Pork Roast
Bring ¼ cup butter to room temperature.Mix in ½ teaspoon dried rosemary and 1 teaspoon dried thyme.
Grill the pork roast over medium high heat, turning several times and basting often with the rosemary thyme butter.Use an instant read meat thermometer to indicate when the meat reaches 145 degrees.
Tent with foil and let rest 10 minutes.
Slice and spoon some of the pickled strawberries on top.

Notes

Wine Recommendation From Wine Spectator Magazine: this bright plate pairs seamlessly with a light Grenache red

Store these pickled strawberries in an airtight container in the refrigerator. They’ll last about a week.

Have some fun, add a hand full of blueberries to the strawberries before adding pickling brine.

Nutrition

Pickled Strawberries … It’s What’s for Pork Roast

Lemon Curry Marinade for Steak Kababs

June 2, 2021 By Lea Ann Brown 25 Comments

These steak kababs start with a lively curry marinade that includes lemon juice. The end result is an incredibly flavored grilled beef kabab recipe for your Summer menu lineup. An easy recipe that your family will love and devour.

This recipe was first published June of 2012 and republished June 2021 with step by step photos.

What You Can Expect From This Recipe

To start with, this steak kababs recipe with curry marinade is one I’ve had for over 30 years and make routinely during the Summer. It’s my go-to steak recipe.

At one time I had about 5 different beef kabab recipes in my database. This one won out as simply the best of the best, and the imposters have been deleted.

I’m always confused on whether we kabob, kebob or k-bob. Most of the time I safely skewer, as to not commit a culinary faux pas. Consulting dictionary.com, kabob seems to be the norm.

However we spell it, everyone loves “small pieces of meat or seafood seasoned or marinated and broiled, often with tomatoes, green peppers, onions, or other vegetables, usually on a skewer”.

These steak kebabs are so easy to make. So easy it was one of our regulars on our Colorado camping trips menu … back in the day.

It’s also a regular for our weeknight meals at home. It’s simply delicious. And a no-fuss recipe.

The marinade is a happy combination of peppercorns, bay leaves, lemon juice, garlic and curry, which infuses luscious flavor into the beef.

And allowing a generous amount of marinating time insures maximum flavor and a tender chunk of steak.

There’s also the visual side of these skewers. Bright orange peppers, dark glossy cubes of beef separated by fresh green sticks of fragrant green onion bulbs.

Let’s take a look.

Ingredients You’ll Need

For the Curry Marinade

Curry Powder: There are so many curry spices and pastes to choose from. For this recipe I’ve used plain old run of the mill grocery store bottled curry spice.
Black Peppercorns
Bay Leaves
Chopped Garlic
Olive Oil: Using olive oil helps draw flavors out of some ingredients like garlic. The garlic flavor will be more prominent in the steak flavor.
Beef Broth
Lemon Juice: Lemon juice, an acid, helps break down raw meat allowing the flavors of the spices to penetrate flavor into the beef.

Ingredients for Steak Kababs

Sirloin Steak: Cut into large bite-sized chunks
Green Onions: White tops only
Orange Bell Pepper seeded and large veins removed: Cut into squares to equal the size of the beef.

Recipe Swaps and Substitutions

Steak: Sirloin steak is such a great choice for beef kababs. It’s lean, tender, beefy in flavor and juicy. A good substitution would be a rib-eye steak or New York Steak. However, they’re both pricier.
Bell Pepper: I like orange bell pepper for this recipe. Simply because of the brilliant color. Feel free to substitute red, yellow or green bell pepper.
Onion: It’s fun to skewer those little bulbs of green onions for a different look and feel. They’ve got less bite in their flavor, and their appearance when grilled reminds me of grilled Mexican knob onions. If you want, substitute sweet or red onion here, cut into flat pieces to match the bell pepper. If using sweet onions, place to planks together on the skewers.
Curry Powder: it would be fun to experiment with any exotic curry paste for this recipe. Some will pack some heat, so be careful with the amount you add.

Step by Step Instructions

This is such an easy recipe, you’ll glide right through these instructions.

how to make steak kebabs. Placing steak and marinade ingredients in a zip lock bag

Step 1: Place all marinade ingredients into a gallon plastic bag. Add the cubed steak. Seal the bag pressing out the air, and squish around with your hands to mix and blend. Refrigerate the beef and marinade overnight.

Metal skewers with sirloin steak chunks, orange bell pepper and green onion

Step 2: Remove the steak from the marinade, reserving ¼ cup of the marinade liquid. Heat grill to 500 degrees, then turn down to 350 degrees. Grill kabobs for about 4 – 5 minutes per side, basting with reserved marinade.

Variations:

This curry marinade would be an excellent choice for Chicken Kabobs.

Pro Tips and Tricks

Cutting Steak for Kebabs: Cut steak cubes as uniform in size as possible and to match the size of the vegetables. This will insure even cooking. You don’t want uncooked vegetables or steak that was so large it didn’t cook through.
Baste that steak: Reserve ¼ cup of the beef kabab marinade. Use a silicone brush to baste the steak kebabs during grilling. This will keep the steak more tender and juicy than ever.
Preparing bell pepper for kabobs: When preparing the bell pepper, remove the seeds and cut away the large veins. You'll have a cleaner bell pepper flavor.
This marinade will work well for any lean steak cut. Try it for this Merlot Steak cut.

FAQ’s

How Long Do I Marinade Steaks for Kebabs?

Try to marinate these beef kabob for the time recommended, 24 hours, but no longer, as the steak can become mushy, If you need a quick fix, marinade for at least 3 hours.

Can I Use Wood Skewers?

Yes, just make sure you soak them in water for 2 hours to prevent them from burning on the grill.

Are metal skewers better than wood skewers?

I have two sets of metal skewers which I prefer over the wooden skewers. Simply because they’re flat which means the beef doesn’t spin around when I turn the kabobs on the grill. Plus I don’t have to remember to soak them like wooden skewers.

Can I Use Other Vegetables?

Yes, but be careful. You’ll want sturdy veggies that will cook in the same amount of time as the beef. Example: avoid zucchini. It’s a soft vegetable and will cook too fast. As will tomatoes. Mushrooms will work, as long as kept whole. If you’re wanting to provide more variety of veggies, I prefer to cook those on separate skewers from the beef. I’d stick with the onions and peppers for this recipe. Save the more delicate vegetables for chicken or fish kabobs.

Steak Kabobs with Curry Marinade

You’re going to love this curry marinade for steak kabobs. Not only easy weeknight meals, but also for entertaining. So easy to easy and easy on the palate, they’ll go quick, so you might want to make a double batch.

Sirloin steak beef kabobs with orange bell peppers and green onions

These kabobs are a meal in themselves, but if you’re looking for more side dish recipes check out these below. Or take a look at my side dish category for even more suggestions.

Feeling kabob crazy?

And if you love a good steak recipe, you won’t want to miss this one for our favorite flank steak. Grilled Flank Steak with Horseradish Cream Sauce. One of the first flank steak recipes I ever made and it remains our favorite. Check it out, along with my Beef Recipes Category.

And if you’ve been curious about cooking with Bison, take a look at my Pan Seared Bison Steak Recipe. It’s easy enough for the beginner cook, clever enough for the adventurous and elegant enough for entertaining.

Print Recipe

5 from 1 vote

Steak Kabobs with Lemon Curry Marinade

These steak kabobs start with a lively beef kabab marinade that includes lemon juice and curry powder. The end result is an incredibly flavored grilled steak recipe for your Summer menu lineup. An easy recipe that your family will love and devour.

Prep Time15

Cook Time10

overnight marinade1

Course: Main Course Beef

Cuisine: American

Diet: Gluten Free

Servings:

Calories: 520kcal

Author: Lea Ann Brown