A great way to deal with a glut of zucchini and a tasty addition to your salad repertoire. It goes great alongside BBQ meats but equally so with salmon patties or frittatas.

And if you have a preserving unit, it’s shelf stable for years.

Ingredients

4kg zucchini

3 red onions – sliced thinly

4 red capsicums – sliced

*500g pack of shell pasta – cooked until still firm ~10 mins.

4 x 440g tins red kidney beans – rinsed

1.5L vinegar – white or apple cider

0.5L water

3 cups sugar

3 tbsp mustard seeds (brown and/or white)

1 tbsp dill seeds

1 tbsp celery seeds

1 tbsp turmeric

1/2 cup salt

Method

Slice zucchini thinly. If zucchinis are very large, cut into quarters before slicing. Put in a large mixing bowl and mix through 1/2 cup of salt. Leave for 3 hours. Drain liquid, rinse and drain again.

Put into a large stockpot, add vinegar, water and sugar and bring to a boil. Add mustard seeds, dill seeds, celery seeds and turmeric and boil for 2 mins. Add pasta and red kidney beans and mix well.

At this stage you can load into sterilised jars and allow to cool. Standard advice is to store in a fridge.

To make them shelf stable, load them into preserving jars. I use a Fowlers Preserving Unit. This quantity fills 12 x #27 jars. Bring them up to 92C and hold at this temperature for 90 mins. Check seals and store any that don’t seal properly in the fridge.