You don't have to be a food preserving genius to create tasty pickled vegetables. Just a few minutes in vinegar and you have ready-to-eat pickles. Quick pickles are meant to be consumed immediately (or within days) and stored in the refrigerator, not in your pantry until wintertime. To quick pickle, thinly slice cucumbers, radishes, onions, fennel - you name it - and cover with vinegar, such a white or rice vinegar. In about 30 minutes you have burger- or salad-ready pickles!
This technique works great, especially when you find yourself with a too-hot red onion. You know the kind that is just too powerful to consume raw? That was the kind we had, one that was meant to go into our potato salad but would have given us all dragon breath, so I decided to give the onion a good pickling. With a mandoline (you could use a chef's knife too), I thinly sliced the onion into a bowl then covered with seasoned rice vinegar. Into the fridge they went for half an hour. The result were delicious, mellowed yet tangy onions that made our potato salad sing!
