Home Preserved Pickled Garlic

   For the first time in many years we have achieved a decent quantity and quality of garlic!
    We bought the garlic bulbs at the Chutney Festival at Barrington Court last year, from a local farmer who has grown them for years, even supplying River Cottage.
   No matter what we always end up with a few garlic bulbs that won't keep, not that there is anything too wrong with them, just not nice enough to keep all winter long, so instead of trying to use 5 garlic bulbs up in a couple of weeks I pickle them. They are best put into smaller preserving pots as you never get huge amounts...and you don't really want to eat your way through a large jar full when you open it as you will get objections from your friends.
 This is a recipe i first tried last time we had a big crop...about 5 years ago. It's adapted from a book called "The Food Lover's Guide To Canning" by Rich and Crawford, 'canning' being the American term for 'bottling'. It's a must if you want to bottle soups, fruits and vegetables as it takes you through both boiling water bottling and pressure bottling so your produce will keep for longer.
   I always use one or the other method as it really does mean the produce will keep well, and it stays perfect without any shrinkage or spoilage for many months.
 
Pickled Garlic

8 oz of garlic cloves, pealed and the rough bit at the end cut off
a sprig of fresh thyme
a sprig of fresh rosemary
4 crushed peppercorns
1/2 cup white wine vinegar(or just white vinegar)
1/2 cup of mead, or white wine
1 dried chili pepper, of the hotness you prefer, de seeded and sliced 
1 tbs of honey
1 tsp of sea salt

Put the thyme, rosemary and peppercorns in a muslin bag and tie up the bag. Put it in a smallish saucepan and add the prepared garlic cloves, vinegar, mead, chili pepper, honey and salt.
   Cover and bring to the boil, boiling for only five minutes. place somewhere to cool, keeping it covered.
   Prepare your preserving jars by washing out the glass jar and placing into an oven heated to 80 degrees C. place the lids in a saucepan of boiling water.
  If you are going to have a boiling water bath to preserve the jars, get this, and all your preserving bits ready.
  The boiling water bath needs to be hot (82 degrees C) when you place the hot jars into it.

   Now you have everything ready, put the saucepan with the garlic in back onto the hob and boil again, for another five minutes.
   Remove the muslin bag from the saucepan.
  Ladle into the hot jars leaving 1/2 an inch between the top of the garlic and it's juices, and the top of the jar. Make sure the rim of the jar is very clean. Screw on dried, but still hot, lid.

  If you aren't going to boiling water process the garlic, place all the hot jars together and wrap tea towels around them, so they cool down slowly, this will seal them but they need to be eaten within a few months.

  If you are going to boiling water process them, put them into the boiling water bath for 20 minutes. After the 20 minutes are up, remove them from the water and leave to cool.


Please use sensible precautions when using boiling water!
If you intend to boiling water or pressure process your preserves there are loads of very good American books out there, please read one of them before doing any pressure processing!