Excerpted from Wild Fermentation…
Growing up in New York City, experiencing my Jewish heritage largely through food, I developed a taste for sour pickles. Most of what is sold in stores as pickles, and even what home canners pickle, are preserved in vinegar. My idea of a pickle is one fermented in a brine solution. Pickle-making requires close attention. My first attempt at brine pickle-making resulted in soft, unappealing pickles that fell apart, because I abandoned it for a few days, and perhaps because the brine was not salty enough, and because of the heat of the Tennessee summer. And and and. “Our perfection lies in our imperfection.” There are, inevitably, fermentation failures. We are dealing with fickle life forces, after all.
I persevered though, compelled by a craving deep inside of me for the yummy garlic-dill sour pickles of Guss’s pickle stall on the Lower East Side of Manhattan and Zabar’s on the Upper West Side and Bubbie’s in upscale health food stores elsewhere. As it turns out, brine pickles are easy. You just need to give them regular attention in the summer heat, when cucumbers are most abundant.
One quality prized in a good pickle is crunchiness. Fresh tannin-rich grape leaves placed in the crock are effective at keeping pickles crunchy. I recommend using them if you have access to grape vines. I’ve also seen references in various brine pickle recipes to using sour cherry leaves, oak leaves, and horseradish leaves to keep pickles crunchy.
The biggest variables in pickle-making are brine strength, temperature, and cucumber size. I prefer pickles from small and medium cucumbers; pickles from really big ones can be tough and sometimes hollow in the middle. I don’t worry about uniformity of size; I just eat the smaller ones first, figuring the larger ones will take longer to ferment.
The strength of brine varies widely in different traditions and recipe books. Brine strength is most often expressed as weight of salt as a percentage of weight of solution, though sometimes as weight of salt as a percentage of volume of solution. Since in most home kitchens we are generally dealing with volumes rather than weights, the following guideline can help readers gauge brine strength: Added to 1 quart of water, each tablespoon of sea salt (weighing about .6 ounce) adds 1.8% brine. So 2 tablespoons of salt in 1 quart of water yields a 3.6% brine, 3 tablespoons yields 5.4%, and so on. In the metric system, each 15 milliliters of salt (weighing 17 grams) added to 1 liter of water yields 1.8% brine.
Some old-time recipes call for brines with enough salt to float an egg. This translates to about a 10% salt solution. This is enough salt to preserve pickles for quite some time, but they are too salty to consume without a long desalinating soak in fresh water first. Low-salt pickles, around 3.5% brine, are “half-sours” in delicatessen lingo. This recipe is for sour, fairly salty pickles, using around 5.4% brine. Experiment with brine strength. A general rule of thumb to consider in salting your ferments: more salt to slow microorganism action in summer heat; less salt in winter when microbial action slows.
Timeframe: 1-4 weeks
Special Equipment:
- Ceramic crock or food-grade plastic bucket
- Plate that fits inside crock or bucket
- 1-gallon/4-liter jug filled with water, or other weight
- Cloth cover
Ingredients (for 1 gallon/4 liters):
- 3 to 4 pounds/1.5 to 2 kilograms unwaxed
- cucumbers (small to medium size)
- 3⁄8 cup (6 tablespoons)/90 milliliters sea salt
- 3 to 4 heads fresh flowering dill, or 3 to 4
- tablespoons/45 to 60 milliliters of any form of
- dill (fresh or dried leaf or seeds)
- 2 to 3 heads garlic, peeled
- 1 handful fresh grape, cherry, oak, and/or
- horseradish leaves (if available)
- 1 pinch black peppercorns
Process:
- Rinse cucumbers, taking care to not bruise them, and making sure their blossoms are removed. Scrape off any remains at the blossom end. If you’re using cucumbers that aren’t fresh off the vine that day, soak them for a couple of hours in very cold water to freshen them.
- Dissolve sea salt in ½gallon (2 liters) of water to create brine solution. Stir until salt is thoroughly dissolved.
- 3. Clean the crock, then place at the bottom of it dill, garlic, fresh grape leaves, and a pinch of black peppercorns.
- Place cucumbers in the crock.
- Pour brine over the cucumbers,place the (clean) plate over them, then weigh it down with a jug filled with water or a boiled rock. If the brine doesn’t cover the weighed-down plate, add more brine mixed at the same ratio of just under 1 tablespoon of salt to each cup of water.
- Cover the crock with a cloth to keep out dust and flies and store it in a cool place.
- Check the crock every day. Skim any mold from the surface, but don’t worry if you can’t get it all. If there’s mold, be sure to rinse the plate and weight. Taste the pickles after a few days.
- Enjoy the pickles as they continue to ferment. Continue to check the crock every day.
- Eventually, after one to four weeks (depending on the temperature), the pickles will be fully sour. Continue to enjoy them, moving them to the fridge to slow down fermentation.
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My family has been making “Romanian pickles” for years. My grandfather started pickling in 10 gallon wooden barrels. We use the recipe that you mention, without the grape leaves or black pepper seeds, and with the addition of 3 dried chili peppers per gallon. They are by far the best pickles I’ve ever had.
We also pickle green tomatoes, cauliflower, celery, and small watermelons with the same recipe.
I had to learn the “taste” of the salt water. We also only use koshering salt. There is no iodine, and it does the best job.
Also, the container HAS to be airtight. If not, the pickles will decompose, making little pickle-mush bags instead of crunchy pickles. We also pickle them for at least two weeks. Constant attention has to be paid to any leakage of the gallon jars (or quart jars).
I’ll check out the salt concentration that you wrote, and see how it compares to my learned taste.
Take care
I am in the process of making your pickles I started them 3 days ago and bit into one of the smallest ones today and it was perfect. I think I will leave the larger ones in longer. Now that they are to my liking how do I store them? Should I make up a new batch of brine? Can it just be the brine with out the garlic, dill and leaves? Can I use the old brine to start new picles? So many questions.
I usually store in the fridge in the original brine. Many people add a cup of the old brine to a fresh batch as a starter. In Russian cuisine, extra brine is used in summer soups. Yum!
Exactly the info. I was looking for. I have just finished my first batch of cucumber carrot combo. I had to put them in smaller containers so have some brine left over. It seems a shame to dispose of it but I wasn’t sure if I could reuse it. I will keep it as a starter. I added some curry leaves to the mix along with garlic and some dill. Really interesting flavour! My cucumbers were not the freshest to start. I had an excess of English cucumbers given to me so thought i could use them in lacto-fermentation. I am happy with the outcome but will certainly use the freshest produce next time.
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TWO Tablespoons of Salt per lb of cucumbers
hello everyone,
my problem is that when we do pickles we use vinegar and pasuerize them so that we can store them till/through winter without spoiling in a storage room, not refrigerator because there isn’t that big a refrigerator to hold the season worth of cucumbers. are you saying that traditional fermented cucumbers (or other vegetables) cannot be kept without refrigeration in a storage room from now till late fall or winter when the temperatures go down? if that is so I will have to continue using vinegar and pastuerization
I used a similar recipe last year but the pickles went bad. I was so dissapointed. I put them in a 1/2 gal mason jat this year. I am afraid to leave them out. Will leaving the jar in tje fridge sumply sloe the process or cause it not to work at all? I dont know what went wrong last time.
Ferment at ambients temperatures for a few days, then as soon as pickles turn olive green move to fridge to slow down progress and keep from getting mushy.
Thank You Sandor, Making Lacto fermented pickles from these guidelines has become a very satisfying hobby. I am happy to find that the process ameliorates any bitterness you may find in batches of cucumbers too.
are these what I know as dill pickles that my non jewish farming grandparents used to make? Will they keep in the brine all winter. I seem to remember them going down to the cellar all winter to grab pickles.
These pickles can last all winter either in the fridge or in a cool root cellar. At typical ambient temperatures they will get mushy.
With a half gallon jar of pickles in the fridge and two more jars fermenting in the wings I absolutely love this method.
But I do have a practical question. We will be on vacation and I know that the garden will produce enough cucs for at least one more jar of pickles before we go but I will not have enough time to let them sit on the counter the two weeks or so necessary for the fermentation to work. Can I prepare the jar and toss it into the fridge and let it ferment slowly there or should I add whey to speed up the process (I really like the flavor using a salt brine only and would prefer not to alter my technique)?
Any suggestions would be extremely helpful.
I think you could move them to the fridge, but I have not done this myself. No need to add whey.
The cucumbers in my garden are not coming in all at the same time. So I can’t pickle them all together. I am thinking of starting a gallon krok and just adding the cucumders as they are ready to pick. Do you think this will work?
The only problem is the cucumber pickles can ripen fast in hot weather and then get mushy so different ones will be ready then gone-too-far in the same batch. Better to accumulate them in the fridge then pickle a bunch at the same time.
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Can I slice these cucumber before fermenting?
I always ferment them whole, but you can certainly try it sliced.
I have a batch of sour pickles that have been on my counter in a ceramic crock for a week now. I live in NW Florida and my house temp stays between 75-77degs. I started sampling the pickels after four days and as of today they seem to be loosing their cruch and I plan on moving them to the fridge.
My question is, do I leave them in the crock weighted down, or can I transfer them to sealed jar without a weight? I think I’ve seen the latter suggested, but only after straining the brine and boiling it to kill any organisms. Thoughts?
You can store in the fridge with live brine without boiling it.
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How big of a crock do you use with this recipe?
A gallon or larger.
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My pickles are magnificent!! Thank you!!
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I’ve been making kraut for a few years using Wild Fermentation as a reference. Last year I tried making sour pickles, but I messed up. This year I have a bumper crop of pickling cukes, so I am at it again. The jar went into the basement a few hours ago, and Tuesday morning can’t come soon enough. I also made a batch of garlic sausage and marjoram kielbasa. Thank so much for writing about fermentation. I just love the taste of my home made ferments.
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great great blog. only a recommendation… if you could introduce at least one image or photo into the bigger texts like that, could be easy to read, because the (nice) dessign of the web has strong images, and only -long-text ask the eye for some point of refresh
the theme -vegs, foods, ask for some example, maybe, too-
maybe im too much “optical perfectionist”… well, it smy work
nice nice web again,
another fermentators
pickles and fermentation are big in big old muslim culture´s cook, and it was passed -as millions of useful knowings in gardening, mathematics, chemistry….- to the tradition of the south of Spain, where i live.
search for Morocco´s “limones en conserva”, they taste fantastic, they are used as a perfumed acid touch for lot of recipes
Musulmanes in Andalucía used lacto-fermentation and land-bacteries cultives in agricultura, it was ancestral effective and natural process was kept and improved for siecles and was stopped and boikotted by big chem u.s. corporations in the 80´s
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Fresh grape leaves or fresh ANY leaves N.E.Ohio are hard to come by most of the year. Any substitutes, or can they be frozen and used after thawing. I think Sandor mentioned in one of his videos that you could use tea. I generate a lot of used teabags. Is that any good?
I would point out that any time cucumbers are growing, leaves are on the trees. And in cool weather, crunchiness is not much of an issue. But yes, you can use tea bags.
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After my pickles are done, can I jar them and to a water bath
If you do it will kill the live cultures in them.
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I was using a this recipe and another one combined and I added too much salt by accident. I only started my pickles a few day’s ago and just tasted them and they are waaaaay to salty. Is there any way to fix that issue now? Can I pour out half of the brine and just replace the liquid with water to reduce the salt?
Sounds like a good plan.
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My Wisconsin booklet mentions removing the scum daily. You are the first I’ve seen mention mold. I tossed my first batch because of the white mold forming around the edges of my weight. So are mold and scum interchangeable words? After sterilizing my crock etc. and starting a new batch, the mold is back and I’m worried because it’s the end of cucumber season.
Scum can describe both yeast and mold growth on the surface.
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Hi! I love fermented pickles, but I’m a little concerned that I may poison myself with the batch I just made.
I used 4 tbsp of kosher salt for the four cups of water I used, and let the pickles ferment for a week and one day. The pickles themselves are fine, if not a little salty; they aren’t soft or anything. The brine, however, is really viscous in ways that it never has been the previous times I’ve fermented pickles. Would they still be safe to eat, or should I toss them?
No need to worry about safety. Whether you want to eat or toss is an aesthetic decision, not a safety decision.
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