Every year I look forward to the appearance of fresh dill and pickling cucumbers at the Old Town Farmers Market. I love a good slightly sour, slightly spicy pickle. 1 - pint, 6-8 pickling cucumbers
1 - bunch fresh dill
4 cups water
1/2 cup white distilled vinegar
2-tablespoons pickling/canning/kosher salt (table salt has additives to prevent clumping that will make the brine cloudy.)
3-6 cloves of garlic
sprinkle of crushed pepper flakes (optional)
5-10 black peppercorns
2-liter or 2-quart container with a cover
Rinse the cucumbers to remove dirt or bit of dried on vegetation. Don't scrub them, just rinse them. The blossom end of the cucumbers needs to be trimmed off, just a nip on the end. If like me you are never sure which end is the blossom end, trim both. The blossom end contains an enzyme that will cause the pickles to go soggy, so it is important that it be trimmed off. Mix the brine of water, vinegar and salt, stir until the salt dissolves. If your water is strongly chlorinated, use bottled or distilled water, as the chlorine can interfere with fermentation. You can also bring tap water to a boil for two minutes, then let it cool to room temperature to boil off most of the chlorine.
I have found that putting the spices in the bottom of the jar works best. I smash the garlic cloves with the side of a heavy knife and remove the skins, put the dill in the bottom. Pack the trimmed cucumbers in, if they are really large, you can quarter or halve them.
Pour the brine over the cucumbers and spices.
You want to weight this down so that the cucumbers always stay submerged. I have cut plastic container lids to fit in the jar and hold things down, and I weight this down with 1/2 a cup or so of the brine in a sealed ziplock bag. If the jar or picking crock is large, mix more brine using the same proportions as above.
The important thing is to keep the veggies submerged. If the cucumbers float to the surface, the air will allow mold to grow spoiling the batch. Place the jar on something to catch any overflow, and leave loosely covered on the kitchen counter top for 4 to 10 days depending on room conditions. The cucumbers will change from cucumber green to pickle green. It will develop an acid smell (acidic acid is formed in the process.) Some bubbling may happen. If mold (white or black are most common), develops, toss the batch out. In five years of making these, 10-15 times a year, I have tossed three or four batches. It hurts when it happens, but it does not happen often.
When the pickles have developed the flavor and texture you want, remove the weights, cover and refrigerate. They will keep for up to a month in the refrigerator. I make small batches, that are gone within a week or so.
The pickling process is actually a form of fermentation. The process forms an acid that prevents spoiling. It is an ancient form of food preservation. My lab science course at college was Human Nutrition. We did food preservation in the lab portion of the class. The professor was an ichthyologist, and mad-scientist. He was fascinating to listen to. He would go off on a tangent, filling board after board with chemical structures, then turn around and say, "you don't need to know that, I just thought some of you might find it interesting!" I learned more cheistry in the semester than in a year of high school chemistry because what he was doing was materially connected to something I understood - food. We spent an hour one evening discussing butter and margarine. His urging, was to use the devil we know - aka butter- rather than the chemical creation we are still trying to understand. Butter, especially salted butter, was a way of preserving cream, it has been around for centuries. We made cheese in the lab, a way of preserving milk for years.
After I wrote this post, I went for a walk at the US Botanic Garden, and came across this display on food preservation.
