Pickled Button Mushrooms

In the last few weeks, inspired by Alton Brown and the "American Pickle" episode of his show Good Eats, I've been making a number of experiments in pickling, starting with making pickles out of sliced zucchini (a Brown suggestion.) Since then I've been expanding my range and here I present one of my recent successes, pickled crimini mushrooms.

This recipe is loosely based off a recipe in the text Putting Food By of Hertzberg, Greene, and Vaughan. Really the chief idea I borrowed from that book was the technique of parcooking the mushrooms before pickling them. In a previous attempt I simply used raw mushrooms the way I might use raw carrots or zucchini and the results were far inferior.

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Ingredients

1 pound button mushrooms
½ cup lemon juice
1 cup malt vinegar
2 tablespoons kosher salt
1 teaspoon white sugar
1 teaspoon dried basil
1 bay leaf
a large pinch of black peppercorns
1 clove garlic
water as needed

Directions

Place the mushrooms in a large saucepan, pour the lemon juice over them, and add enough water to cover the mushrooms completely. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat to a simmer. After 5 minutes remove the mushrooms from heat and drain them. Meanwhile, in another saucepan, combined the vinegar, 1 cup water, the salt, the sugar, and all the seasonings; bring this mixture to a boil, then reduce to a simmer for 5 minutes. Transfer the mushrooms to a jar or other suitable container and pour the hot brine over the mushrooms, which should be completely submerged. If they are not, add just enough boiling water to cover them. Cover the jar and allow it to cool for a while at room temperature before moving the jar to the refrigerator. Within a day or two the mushrooms will be nicely firm and pickled.

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The pickled mushrooms can be eaten straight of course but they're also good sliced into a salad. When I do this again I may use something other than malt vinegar, however; its taste is rather strong and perhaps a milder vinegar, such as rice wine vinegar, would be more suitable.