Fermenting Pickles: A Hopefully Simple Tutorial

First let's talk about the basics: The basic process is to wash and clean cucumbers, add them to a seasoned salt water brine and allow time to run it's course in a room temperature environment. As time goes on the vegetable will release Lactobacillus into the brine (Lactic Acid) and you will end up with a wonderful tasting pickle. You may encounter some yeast, mold, or scum along the way.
Then off to the fridge they go, where the culture will be slowed to a craw, and your pickles can be stored until you are done eating them. 

Things that impact your pickle making process:
Time
Sterility
Freshness of produce
External Temperature
                                                        Light
                                                        Salt content

Hopefully this tutorial will help you in making a wonderful, and tasty old fashioned pickle full of tummy loving good bacteria.

This recipe is for a 2 gallon crock, or 2 one gallon jars.

10 lbs pickling cucumbers- the fresher the better
2/3 cup non-iodized salt without caking agent. (canning salt, pickling salt, kosher salt, sea salt etc.) Keep in mind each flake size of salt is different. This recipe is using kosher salt so if you are using a large flake salt from the high reaches of the Himalayan mountains you might need a little more to achieve the same salinity. 
4-6 tablespoon of pickling seasoning
10 heads of dill (You can never have too much dill in a dill pickle.) 
6 cloves of garlic (optional, but you are not eating MY pickles if you don't include it!) 
1-2 chili peppers if desired. (optional) 
Non chlorinated water
Grape or oak leaves to cover your jar. 

As you can tell my pickling recipe is very based on taste. I learned from an old Jewish recipe that is like a lot of old recipes- a splash, a dash, a shake of this or that. I did modify it for safe canning practices. 

The only things you can't adapt are the salt amount, and don't add sugar.

1) Start by inspecting your cucumbers for softness, and rot, and scraping the blossom end off the cucumber.

This is the blossom end of the cucumber. It's brown and paper and comes off easily with a butter knife, or a fingernail.

The blossom should be removed entirely.

 See the contrast? The one on the right has it's blossom end totally removed.

This is a blossom end removed.

Then give your cucumbers a good washing! This will wash away any residual blossom, or dirt. Wash them in a bowl of clear water to help refresh older cucumbers.

DO NOT USE SOAP! ESPECIALLY ANTI-MICROBIAL/ANTI-BACTERIAL SOAP
It can impact your ferment. If you are concerned about pesticide residue fill a large bowl with cool water and vinegar and then rinse well.

Now it's time to fill our jar! I'm using a 2 gallon Anchor Hocking glass canister for my ferments. These can be purchased for about $10 at Wal-Mart or at second hand stores. I like this jar because it has a loose fitting lid that gas can escape.

You can use pickling crocks, gallon jars, half gallon jars, quarts, or food grade buckets with lids and airlocks. Basically what I'm saying is don't go out and spend a fortune to learn to pickle. Use whatever you can get your hands on.

I add all spices, garlic and dill to the bottom of the jar to stop them from floating to the top. In pickling air creates spoilage so the more you can keep in the brine the better.

Once all of your spices are in add your salt. (We had to add more salt due to the large flake of the salt we had on hand.) The salt is a very important part of this process. It both draws the natural juices out of the vegetables, and also preserves the produce until the lactic acid takes over. DO NOT TRY TO CUT THE SALT DOWN! This is not a low salt process.

Add about 1/2 cup of filtered, non-chlorinated water to the bottom of the jar to create a strong salt brine.

Now jam your cucumbers in! They work best when you stack them length wise tight in your jar. In larger containers you can do two layers of pickles. The tighter the pickles are in the jar, the less likely they are to float when you pour your water in.

Because this jar doesn't taper at the top we put the grape leaves in between the rows of cucumbers.

This is a gallon jar, filled with two layers of cucumbers and then grape leaves are added on top.

Fill your jar to the top with water, covering all the vegetables, and put a loose fitting lid on top.
Air needs to escape your brine. If using mason jars don't use the lids, only the rings with a clean kitchen towel or paper towel inserted.

For this process I like non-chlorinated water without fluoride, but do not use distilled water.





Place your jar in a cool dark place. Pickle cultures do best in an environment between 40-74 degrees F. Any hotter and you could get yeast over growth that will soften pickles, any cooler and your ferment will slow to a crawl. If your house is hotter then 74 degrees (like mine) any glass container can be set in a bowl, or tote full of cool water to maintain a more even fermentation temperature.

Check your  ferment daily. Push any vegetables back under the brine to prevent spoilage, and make sure you scrape any scum off the top of the brine. Scum will be a off white film with out fuzzy mold, or odd colors.

Small patches of mold can form too. Gray and fuzzy is harmless but might make your ferment a little "earthier" in flavor.

This is day 2 of a pickle making. One pickle has managed to float to the top and will need to be pushed back down into the brine. Notice the bubbles, they are a good sign that your culture is working!

Fermentation time is variable based on temperature, and the longer you allow them to sit the more intense they become. Test one after a week, but it can take up to 4 weeks depending on temperature, and how fermented you like your pickle.

A finished pickle will turn olive in color, and be translucent. The brine will also be cloudy and that is okay.









MY FAVORITE QUESTION:

HOW DO I KNOW IF MY PICKLE WENT BAD? 

Humans survival has been closely linked to determining if food is bad using our instincts. Does it look bad? Does it smell bad? Does it feel bad? Does it taste bad?
Notice the order? You have 3 senses you use before anything ever gets into your mouth. And if you still decide to taste it, a bad pickle will not be swallowed!

If a pickle has red or pink mold, an off smell, or is slimy don't eat it!

Trust me! You will know when a pickle brine as gone bad. 

But let's not end on that note! 

This is 25lbs of pickles. What are you going to do with all of those pickles? Most people don't have enough room in their fridge. You are able to can your fermented pickle! As long as your ph is under 4.6 your pickle is safe for canning! I test mine with test strips from the brewery supply store, or you can use this guide produced by the government and add vinegar to your batch: What your government says to do.

I do not personally like vinegar added my ferment, because part of the reason I ferment is to avoid the vinegar. But I do follow their canning process in the link above when I get ready to can.
Also if you notice their recipe requires a great deal more salt because of the vinegar and salt need to strike a balance. This is a newer guideline, but it is the guideline so I'm including it. Anything you do otherwise is obviously at your own (relatively low) risk. Notice also the time frame for a fermented pickle is much longer with vinegar.

And finally you should know you can ferment in spears, sandwich slices, pickle chips or whole.

Processing times will very based on how much inner flesh of the pickle is exposed because the brine will permeate faster then with whole pickles, and lactic acid will be released faster. 

I hope this helps in your pickling journey! Don't be afraid, worst case you throw away some cucumbers and start over! 

Guess what I did this weekend? It involved me, findout what it takes to make a good mother, and 4 bottles of white wine.

Guess what I did this weekend? It involved me, finding out what it takes to makes a good mother, and 4 bottles of white wine.

 If you guessed starting to make white wine vinegar then you are right! I started down this rabbit hole on Saturday when I decided that I wanted to make raspberry sage vinegar for salad dressing. After looking at several recipes for raspberry vinegar they all required that a person make their salad dressing with white wine vinegar. Funny thing, I’ve never noticed white wine vinegar! I know I’ve had rice vinegar, white distilled vinegar, and white balsamic vinegar but never white wine vinegar.  I checked Costco and Cash & Carry and no one had white vinegar in the amounts that I needed make my salad dressing dreams come true. Then it hit me! I can make my own vinegar! So off I went, first looking for the “mother” but it seems that once a person gets a mother they can keep storing and feeding it, and they don’t need to buy more mothers, so no one in the local area sells vinegar mothers any longer.

I think it must have been amusing to the brew guy to watch the light turn on in my head and say “hey what stops me from using apple cider vinegar with the yeast already in the bottle?” he said to me “See that is why we don’t sell the mothers any longer.” So there I was, willing to add a little bit of apple cider vinegar to my white wine. So off to buy some cheap wine, good old Charles Shaw! But Also I decided to add some cheap Riesling as well to make it lighter fruitier white wine vinegar. It doesn’t matter if the wine costs a lot, it’s more about using what I think will taste decent.  

I started my vinegar with one jar of apple cider vinegar with the mother in the bottom of the jar, two bottles of cheap Chardonnay, and two cheap bottles of Riesling. I poured everything in a glass jar and now we are playing the waiting game. In about 8-12 weeks I’ll have white wine vinegar ready to use in all kinds of recipes. The best part is that right about then we’ll be coming into apple season, and I’ll be able to use my mother to make apple cider vinegar.  It’s also important to cover the crock to protect them from light.

                                                         The couldy color is from the "mother"

The only problem is that I have raspberries that are ready now and sitting in my fridge! I got so excited about the vinegar that I totally forgot about the raspberries. What to do with those before the vinegar is ready? I decided to try a few different things with these berries. The first one is allowing the berries to sit in a combination of white vinegar and water with herbs, the second one is even less vinegar,  and the third jar are raspberries that are being fermented the same way my pickles are fermented. 1 Tsp Whey and a bit of salt.  I’ve added herbs (you are looking at sage, tarragon, and an greek oregino) and garlic to these jars to add flavor. When I tasted the berries today it was amazing the flavor contrast between the jars. The vinegar really zaps the flavor out of the berries and compeats with it. It's the food version of someone screaming really loud when you are trying to listen to music.

Below is a phot of my kitchen (yes it's world's ugliest) and my strange fermented jars that my little girl is growing up thinking is normal and that everyone keeps in their kitchen.  The only problem is that jar is my pickle crock and pickle season is going to be very soon. So it looks like transfering a giant crock of cheap wine is going to be on my to do list today.