You might feel as I do, that as the pace of our days has quickened, we rarely make room for anticipation in our lives. Experiences move past us one after another, with little time to hope or wonder about the future, and even less time to reflect on pleasures of the past. Yet in our flurry, we may be missing an aspect of life that is beautiful and essential; planning, looking ahead, and preparing for what’s to come enlarges our experience and, as it does, it deepens every satisfaction.
It pays to look for ways to welcome anticipation back into our lives and, in the summer kitchen, making pickles is one way to do this. The process of making pickles slows us down because it unfolds over days or weeks and can’t be rushed. It is a process that has a beginning, middle, and end, and with each phase expectation builds.
There is, of course, a familiar and circular challenge. Making pickles takes time when we have none to spare. But pickle making is unique among kitchen endeavors in that it allows us to rely on an invisible team of helpmates, the bacterial cultures that make fermentation happen. These cultures move our labors along and toil for us as we tend to other tasks. Once we establish a home for them, we have the pleasure of observing their work—marveling at their bubbles, smelling, poking, and tasting from time to time.
What’s better is that if you are at home as much as I am, you will appreciate experiencing adventure without ever leaving your kitchen because pickle making is an endless source of mystery and wonder. The process is fascinating; it is also the cherished source of a quiet and particular kind of excitement.
What I find most memorable about a good batch of pickles is its telltale crunch: sour and salty, cool and refreshing, and especially welcome in the heat of summer. Each batch of pickles has subtle variations in taste, texture, and color, but with each you can bite into a pickle and hear and feel it give. This is what separates real pickles from all others. Behind the crunch is the fact that real pickles are fermented in a salty brine, not preserved in vinegar. Fermentation enhances their vitality and makes them a living food.
Homemade pickles are so easy to make. The recipe is as fool proof as a fermentation recipe can be, which is a confession of sorts. Once a summer, when it’s really hot and my kitchen is especially inviting to an army of microbes, I have a batch that fails. The reason why remains a mystery, but then how cucumbers become pickles is a mystery, too.
Here is a recipe for you to use and enjoy. It my adaptation of a recipe from Wild Fermentation by Sandor Katz, and you can scale it up or down depending on how many cucumbers you have on hand.
Ingredients
3-4 pounds small pickling cucumbers
6 tablespoons coarse sea salt (I use gray Celtic Sea Salt)
3-4 heads fresh flowering dill, or 3-4 tablespoons dill in any form
2-3 heads fresh garlic, scrubbed with loose peels discarded and cloves separated (there is no need to fully peel the cloves)
1 handful fresh oak, horseradish, cherry or grape leaves
6-8 whole black peppercorns
Recipe
1. Rinse cucumbers and scrape off any remaining blossoms. If you are using cucumbers that were not just picked, soak them for a couple of hours in cold water to freshen them.
2. Place sea salt in 1/2 gallon of filtered water to create a brine solution. Stir until the sea salt is thoroughly dissolved. Some recipes ask you to boil the brine, but this isn’t necessary.
3. For 3-4 pounds of cucumbers, I use 3 half-gallon glass canning jars, but the recipe works with any ceramic crock or bowl (see Note below). Into the bottom of each jar place equal portions of the dill, garlic cloves, fresh leaves , and peppercorns.
4. Divide the cucumbers among the jars and gently cover them with either pickle weights or another object that will keep them submerged under the brine. Then add enough brine to cover the cucumbers by an inch or two. If you run out, mix more brine using the same ratio of just under 1 tablespoon of coarse sea salt to 1 cup of water. Loosely cover the jars and leave them at room temperature out of direct sunlight.
5. Check the pickles every few days and skim any mold from the surface, but don’t worry if you can’t get it all.
6. Taste the pickles 7–10 days after starting the recipe. When you like the flavor, remove the pickles and place them in a clean storage container. Strain the brine you used for pickling and add it to the container, covering the pickles completely. If you like pickled garlic, you can also collect the whole garlic cloves, cover them with brine, and store them separately in the refrigerator.
Note: If you use a crock or bowl for making pickles, you will need 3 additional items: a plate that fits inside the crock or bowl, a sealed bag of water or other weight, and a dishcloth to cover. Gently place the plate over the cucumbers and use the weight to keep them submerged. Then cover the container with the dishcloth to keep out dust.
I love experimenting in the kitchen, which means I learn many lessons through trial and error. Based on my own experience, here are some hard-won pickle-making tips: Pickle-Making Wisdom
Copyright, Ellen Arian, Ellen’s Food & Soul