Ok, so I started a batch of homemade Pickles yesterday.  They are Lacto-Fermented (non-vinegar).  To explain what that is:

Lacto-Fermentation is a natural process, similar (systematically identical) to wine making, where the vegetables or fruits being fermented (cucumbers and carrots for my initial attempt) are placed in a saltwater brine solution with spices and allowed to soak in an oxygen restricted environment for a period of time from 3 days to upwards and beyond 6 months.  Under the oxygen restricted setting, harmful bacteria are not able to survive, however, the lacto bacteria thrive.  The good bacteria feast on the sugars in the vegetables or fruit and convert them to lactic acid (or alcohol in the case of using a sweet solution as opposed to salty).

For my experiment I am going to sample the pickles on the 4th day, provided I see positive signs of fermentation before hand, i.e. lots of bubbles being created in the solution.  Depending upon how the pickles taste at that time determines how much longer I will let them ferment.  The longer they sit at room temperature, the stronger (more sour tasting) they will get.  I prefer half-sour kosher dills so I will be stopping the process a lot earlier then some might. I expect them to be finished in a week at the most.  As I said in an earlier post, I will let everyone know how they turn out when the time comes.

The recipe I used is an amalgamation of numerous recipes I saw on the internet while researching, created on the fly as I was filling the jar.  I am going to include it below, not only for your reference, but also for my own so I can replicate it, or at least have it as reference for improving upon during the next batch.

 

BRINE SOLUTION

3 LITERS of water, brita filtered and then boiled for 30 minutes and let to sit until reaching room temperature (to remove any chlorine from the tap water, not as a sterilization procedure — if you have chemical free water (bottled or from a well, for instance), you can use it directly)

1/2 CUP (90 grams +/-) of atlantic sea salt, not packed down (you can not use iodized salt in fermentation)

1/4 CUP of pink himalayan rock salt

 

SPICES

1 LARGE onion, sliced

1 HEAD of fresh (not chinese pre-packaged) garlic, peeled, smashed and sliced

2 BUNCHES of fresh dill weed (maybe something like 1 or 1 1/2 cup if you chopped it up and squashed it into a measuring cup – half of a handful of stems)

1 Small (jalapeno sized) hot pepper, cut in half.  (I am not sure what type of pepper it is exactly, I have never seen them before.  It ‘looks’ like a jalapeno, but they are yellow and red, and do not ‘taste’ like a jalapeno, it isn’t habanero either and wasn’t the regular green chili we have here.  But is was really hot, so I threw it in).

1 TBSP of black peppercorns

1 TBSP of yellow mustard seeds

1 TSP of caraway seeds

2 LEAVES of bay

1 SERVING tea bag of london classic tea (Ideally you should use a couple of fresh grape leaves, however, I couldn’t locate any at the market and didn’t feel like walking around the neighborhood, so I had to use a ‘black’ tea, and that is what I had on hand)

*[You need to use either grape, horseradish, mesquite, oak, or black tea leaves in the batch to promote a crispy pickle; without any tannins in the mix the resulting vegetables will be soggy and not crisp.]

 

That’s it.  I filled up my 5 liter jug with washed cucumbers and carrots, as well as the remaining ingredients listed above, poured the brine over it all and capped it.

It started to leak a little today (*you should use a valve or not seal the jar completely or it will explode from the build up of carbon dioxide the fermentation creates), so I opened it up to remove some brine and I can tell you they smell really good so far; which prompted this post…

 

UPDATE: (18JUL13)

OK, instead of putting a new post for day 3, I am just adding it here.

I tried some of the pickles yesterday on Day 3, They were pretty good.  Not garlicky enough and kinda sweet, so I am hoping that at least the sweetness dies off as they soak a little longer and that they take on a stronger garlic flavor, however, it is possible I didn’t use enough.  Time will tell.

Aside from that, I replaced the empty space created by my eating with a couple of large, coarsely diced kohlrabi.  The more I eat, the more stuff I will add back into it.  I am considering pickling some eggs at the very end.

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© 2013 Levi Stepanov.