Quick Pickled Green Tomatoes

These spicy Pickled Green Tomatoes are a quick and easy way to use up the last of your garden’s harvest! These green cherry tomatoes are pickled with vinegar, garlic, dill and red pepper for a tasty bite size refrigerator pickle.

One of the most obvious signs that fall has really and truly arrived is the first frost. And the worst thing about frost is losing all the delicious fresh garden vegetables, especially tomatoes and peppers.

Our first frost happened last week, so the night before I was outside frantically trying to pick every thing I could from the garden before it shriveled up and turned black.

As a result I ended up with a bowl full of green tomatoes, so I decided it was the perfect time to make a batch of Pickled Green Tomatoes. This year I only planted cherry tomatoes, so instead of sliced green tomato pickles I have a jar of bite sized pickled green cherry tomatoes.

Refrigerator Pickled Green Tomatoes

I made quick refrigerator pickles with my green cherry tomatoes. I prefer to make small batches of refrigerator pickles because they are so quick and easy to make.

For my family a jar or two of pickles at a time is plenty, so I don’t feel the need to can pickles to store all winter long. In this case refrigerator pickles made perfect sense, since I had just about the right amount of green tomatoes to fill one pint size jar.

How do you make Pickled Green Tomatoes?

The first step in making refrigerator pickles is preparing the tomatoes. Of course they need to be washed well before pickling, but if you are using cherry tomatoes you should also poke each one on the top with a toothpick or knife.

The skin of the green tomatoes is thick, so this lets the pickling liquid get inside the tomatoes to flavor them. Then pack the green cherry tomatoes into a mason jar.

Along with the green tomatoes I also added a few slices of garlic and dill. The idea is to use the spices to just flavor the pickles, but not overwhelm them. So I used less than half a clove of garlic and just a few pieces of dill.

Then I combined some white vinegar with water, salt, sugar and peppercorns to make the pickling liquid. I wanted to make spicy green tomato pickles, so I also added a pinch of red pepper flakes.

You could easily leave out the red pepper flakes if you aren’t a fan of spicy pickles. I put just a few flakes of red pepper in my pickles and the heat was really noticeable, so make sure you don’t overdo the crushed red pepper. The pickling liquid needs to be heated up just enough to dissolve the salt and sugar.

The hot pickling liquid is poured into the jar, over the green cherry tomatoes, garlic and dill. Once the mason jar was full I capped it off and set it aside on the counter to cool down to room temperature.

The pickled green tomatoes need to be refrigerated once they have cooled off, and will be ready to eat the next day.

The resulting pickles will keep in the refrigerator for a few weeks. Which then brings up the question, “What do you do with green tomato pickles anyway?”

Well for these cherry tomato pickles I have just been eating them straight out of jar since they are perfectly bite sized. But you could also add them to a salad or slice them and use them on a sandwich.

They also make a nice garnish for meals like beef roast or pulled pork. They are crunchy and spicy and make a unique side for the dinner table.

Recipe Tips

• Using regular table salt in the recipe might cause the pickles to become cloudy or discolored. So if you make pickles often it is good to buy some pickling salt or Kosher salt.
• You can see from the pictures that some of my “green” tomatoes had started to ripen and are slightly orange. It doesn’t really matter because you can also pickle red tomatoes. The ones that have ripened a little bit will not be as crunchy as the ones that are all green.

Find More Refrigerator Pickle Recipes

• Lime Pickled Radish
• Refrigerator Bread and Butter Pickles
• Pickled Beets
• Quick Pickled Green Beans