Recipe Shares from Kelly McVicker
Exclusive recipe shares from Kelly McVicker, tested by the Edible Test Kitchen. One fermented pico de gallo recipe from her book, Essential Vegetable Fermentation, and one an exclusive ...
Pickling Mastery
Kelly McVicker: A Preservation Story
with Recipe Shares in the Edible Test Kitchen
With flavors as vibrant as her personality and colorful jars, master food preserver Kelly McVicker founded McVicker pickles in San Francisco in 2012...
Her signature pickles—one of the recipes she learned from her grandma growing up in Kansas— quickly began appearing in bars and restaurants such as Shake Shack and Creator. And more often than not, her pickles and jarred pickling accouterments were called out with star ingredient billing and her name “McVicker” on the menu.
Ready to take her next step into producing products for market shelves, she shifted production to Forage Kitchen in Oakland, with plans to expand her kitchen space and broaden her packaging options. Then came March 2020. Restaurant closures meant the market for her pickles as a topper for hamburgers and other menu favorites came to an abrupt halt. State inspectors who needed to green-light her new consumer production facility stopped inspecting. McVicker was left with no product to sell or channels to sell them in—she was in a pickle.
With her venture for a retail product line shelved, McVicker decided to (dare we say!) preserve what she loved best about pickling and fermentation. The art and craft of turning a home kitchen into a factory of flavor and nutrition—and sharing the craft and know-how with home cooks. She turned to teaching and writing, including a how-to pickling and fermentation book with recipes, which debuted in March 2020 and built a loyal following despite the pandemic.
With experience teaching food preservation, McVicker she did not hesitate to pivot when she received requests to host virtual classes and even trial-ballooned a new online fermentation club with a stay-at-home crowd ready to fuel the demand.
She now hosts online group classes and private pickling parties; tech companies have jumped in to offer employees a creative way to team-build and bring people together. In some classes, home pickling kits are sent in advance so all are ready to share in the fun. You can order your own McVicker Home Pickling Kit and DIY your own creations from her website too.
“Book sales, pickling kits, online classes have kept me afloat, and finding time to rest and regenerate helped keep me sane, and let me conserve my energy for re-emerging in a different way,” says McVicker. In May, she launched the Root Cellar Seasonal Preservation Club, inviting people to enjoy the smells, flavors and tactile experiences that can be found in home food preservation.
“With all that is going on, the invisible seems a bit more visible to us now, and understanding the role of fermentation is a ripe topic for learning and reopening our kitchens to healthy and flavorful eating again.”
–Kelly McVicker, 2021
Members can join from anywhere in the world, and Bay Area residents will have the option to go in on bulk purchases from area farms. Working together through live online lessons, video recipes and weekly conversations, she plans to engage the senses and preserve the best of the season, nourishing ourselves and supporting local farms in the process.
McVicker herself embodies the vintage appeal of these home crafts with a spirited style and colorful vibe, but also notes that building fermentation and fermented foods into your everyday meals takes some creative practice: “You’ll do it once and you think it will transform the way you eat and the way your family is nourished, but like exercise you need to build it into your routine, figure out a way to make it practical so that it works for you.”
This bubbly, creative zeal to discover and explore all aspects of fermentation—in salsas, drinks, toppers and, of course, pickled vegetables (including her famous McVicker pickles) with unexpected flavor combinations and recipe ideas—is what give SF Bay Area’s Kelly McVicker a good shot at a long-lasting, flavor-filled shelf life.
Recipes by Kelly McVicker
Communities Near You
Related Stories & Recipes