In Toronto we tried Deep Fried Pickles...

I thought after my offering of Poutine from Montreal I would share another food experience that I couldn’t resist recreating but this time from Toronto.

We got a train from Montreal to Toronto at about 6.30am and arrived in the amazing busy city at the hottest point of the day, then we walked to our hotel which, after misreading the map, took us nearly 45 minutes…with 2 suitcases! Needless to say we turned up looking rather dishevelled and just a tad irritable. So after freshening up, unpacking the essentials and deciding we needed a beer we headed down Queen Street West hoping to find the nearest pub.

We found an English styled pub which was packed because it was the day of the England match and we slid into a booth, ordered tall pints of ‘Canadian’ and asked for the bar menu. The first thing that caught my eye was “Deep fried pickles”, I had never heard of this before but they were offered in a lot of the pubs we drank in that week and I personally thought they were delicious, Scott wasn’t quite convinced but still tried them anyway. They were sliced thinly, coated in a non greasy batter and served with tatziki and the taste of all the different flavours combined really worked, especially with the cold beer to wash it down with!

I decided to make my own version of this bar snack but slightly differently, mainly because I don’t like to deep fry anything at home and also because the batter they made was so different to anything I’ve tried before it was almost spongy and I don’t think I could do it justice. I also decided to play around with different flavours so I have done “Dill and Lemon Baked Pickles” and “Spicy Chilli Baked Pickles”.

Left: Chilli baked pickles. Right: Lemon and Dill baked pickles

This really is the easiest snack in the world to make and it is relatively healthy when compared to the deep-fried version! I only made 1 pickle of each flavour because Scott wasn’t sharing this with me and well there’s only so many pickles a girl can eat with no real reason except I wanted to share the recipe!

I sliced the pickles (gherkins) and lay them on some kitchen towel to dry them off a bit then I prepared a plate of beaten egg, a plate of lemon and dried dill breadcrumbs and a plate of chilli flakes breadcrumbs. To make breadcrumbs I toast a slice of bread untill it’s very crispy then blitz it in a blender with the flavouring and tip out onto a plate. Any leftovers can be frozen! You can vary the amount of flavouring you like to your own taste but as a rough guide I used 1 teaspoon of chilli flakes for 1 portion of breadcrumbs (1 slice of bread) and then I used 1 teaspoon dried dill and 1 lemon zest for 1 portion of breadcrumbs.

Fresh organic breadcrumbs with lemon zest and dried dill mixed in

Fresh organic breadcrumbs with dried chilli flakes mixed in

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dip your slice of pickle in the egg and then in one of your breadcrumb flavours so it is completely coated and then place it onto a baking tray. Continue (alternating the flavours) untill all of your pickle slices are coated and ready to go in the oven.

Pickles ready to be baked!

Bake in a preheated oven at 190c for 10 minutes then turn them over for a couple of minutes to brown the underneath. Serve on a big plate or a bowl with plenty of cold beer and maybe some friends and a sporting event on TV!

Lemon and Dill Baked Pickles 

Spicy Chilli Baked Pickles

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