Sour Pickles – Fermented Goodness!
As I hinted at in my last post on pickles, there are two kinds of pickles in the world–those that get their flavor from spice and those that get it from fermentation. The second type are known as sours, or brined, but some of the regular pickles you get from the store are fermented, too.
The basic difference is that with sours bacteria in the pickling liquid creates lactic acid which helps make the liquid acidic. The salt in the liquid helps encourage the good bacteria, and keeps away the bad bacteria. The good bacteria then raises the acid, helping to further keep away the bad.
The other approach is using vinegar to get the acid in there and then other flavors. Both approaches work, but I am a sucker for a good old fashion sour pickle.
Sour pickles can be a little daunting though. You are letting bacteria run wild in your food. That takes a little bit of cooking guts. The truth is that it is no tougher than making refrigerator pickles. People around the world have been fermenting vegetables for eons, so have a little faith in this, but just keep an eye if things seem a bit weird. Bacteria is at work, so there may be scum on the surface but that is normal. Instead look out for pickles that feel slimy or overly soft.
There are two aspects of brining pickles that control the pickling process: temperature and the salinity level. The bacteria that produce the lactic acid do well in a salty environment; lots of other bacteria don’t. However, the saltier the liquid is, the slower the bacteria reproduce. Bacteria also react differently to temperature and reproduce more the warmer it gets. If you work with these two controls you can create an environment that favors the yummy bacteria that you want.
This is my first pickle fermenting experiment in a long time. The results were really good, but a little salty. For the next go around, I am going with a slightly lower level of salt and using a recipe from another DC local. I will follow up with results from that batch. The higher level of salt in the first batch meant that it took longer for the bacteria to do their work. The second batch, with less salt, is moving along a lot quicker. The second batch should be much more sour and have a more pronounced tang.
I got the first recipe from a great website that focuses on fermented food from around the world. The author has a book on it and I think I am going to have to order it. I rewrote the recipe because I skipped a lot of steps and ingredients, so check the original for some additional flourishes.
There is of course lots of information on this subject and I am just scratching the surface. I will keep reporting back as I try more stuff. Here are some additional resources I have enjoyed thumbing through:
- A Polish dill pickle recipe
- Pickle Packers International – The trade org for picklers. They have good info on uses for pickle juice and a good overview on how pickles are made.
- A very detailed document on the science behind pickling. The website seems to have trouble though and isn’t always available. Keep trying!
- Learn more about how commercial pickling is done
- Another recipe for Kosher dills, fermented of course!
- A society dedicated to pickles, complete with recipes
- A nice and simple pickling container
- Traditional ceramic pickling crocks
- Make sure you read The Slow Cook, which is not only a great blog on food but also has great pickle recipes.
Sour Pickles
Note:
There is no easy way to exactly predict how much brine you will need. It is easiest to make a pretty large batch and then make smaller batches if you need a little more. The important thing is to make sure you keep the correct level of salinity. For this recipe it is 1/2 tbs to 1 cup of water, or 1 tbs to 2 cups.
Ingredients:
- 2 lbs Kirby cucumber, unwaxed.
- A good bunch of dill, about half of what comes in a normal supermarket bundle
- 2 cloves of garlic
- 6 black peppercorns
- 3 tbs kosher salt
- 6 cups of water
- 1 large, non-reactive, food safe container which can hold all of this
- 1 plate or bowl which is close to the diameter of the container, used to hold everything under the brine.
- Some sort of cover, or cheese cloth
Directions:
- Wash and scrub the cucumbers. Make sure you remove any remains of the blossoms.
- Mix the salt and water together in a separate container until the salt dissolves.
- Place garlic, dill and pepper corns in the bottom of your container.
- Layer the pickles on top so that they are pretty well packed.
- Pour in the salt brine and then use a plate or bowl to help ensure that all of the pickles are submerged in the brine. None of the pickles should be poking through to the surface. Cover, or use cheese cloth.
- Wait
- Scoop off any scum that floats to the surface. No worries, it is all good.
- Wait
- Sample a Pickle, if it is sour enough, refrigerate the pickles in the brine. It should take 1 to 2 weeks, but could take longer in the winter.
- If you want more flavor then…wait
- Now Enjoy!
The Best of Cookography
Hi,
Can you use a one gallon glass jar, made by “Ball” to do the sour pickles in?
Thank you,
Bob
Definitely! That should work out really well. Glass or ceramic containers are the best because they non-reactive and won’t be effected by the acid and saltiness of the brine.
Two questions..I am in the process of making my first batch of these pickles, – so far so good! I was wondering tho, if I put a little alum in the crock if that would help the pickles stay firmer? Or would that mess up the chemical reactions of the bacteria? Also, once the pickles are done and I want to can them to store them, should I pack them in the same brine they are in, or make up a new one for canning? I have searched everywhere for these questions online and cant find any answers. thanks
To weigh down the cukes you can boil a rock to sanitize it and then use it to hold them all under the liquid.
I have a huge pile of giant and funny shaped cukes. Can I just slice them like hamburger slices and ferment them like that?
Those pottery crocks are expensive! Woo!
Anyone know where I can find them at a good price?
Thanks for the info!
No. Do not cut them up. If you do the surface area to volume radically changes and surface curing or, unfortunately, rotting, takes over. The trick with natural fermentation is to keep the fruit whole. The skin integrity is a natural barrier to invaders much like your own skin. When you cut the cucumber up you remove that protection. Sliced cuckes are best prepared with a sweet vinegar pickle like bread and butter pickles. As for cheap, bry garage sales.
I have a quick question. I have tried to find fresh dill. I can’t find it anywhere in my area of the world. I was wondering if it will make a huge difference to use dry dill seed. And, if I can, how much should I use? Thank you so much!!
I have seen recipes that say you can subtitute dill seed, but I am not sure of the ratio though. My guess would be 1 or 2 tsps…
Tried this out in my two gallon crockery pot. For the first week they were very salty, but once the osmotic action really kicked in they were perfect.
Two notes:
1 – They weren’t garlicky enough for me so I added about one half head of garlic rough minced for 2 gallons. Mmmm.
2 – To get the good bacteria off to a huge head start and choke out bad bacteria I strained off the whey from a tub of Yogurt with active Lactobacilus Acidophilus – the bacteria that gives the tang… and dumped a quarter cup in 2 gallons as a starter culture.
That is a really interesting idea! I saw you can make Greek style yogurt by straining yogurt. You are left with a bunch of whey and this seems like a good use for it. Thanks for the suggestions!
Update:
Made 5 gallons and ran into a glitch…so what else is new…
In the larger container the packing permitted a larger ratio of vegetable matter to liquid. Up through day two things progressed as normal. Day three presented scum and some mold !!! on the surfaces. Cleaned off and tested liquid and found it almost normal. Supposition is that given the tighter packing of cucmbers and therefore less brine the osmotic action has diluted the salt to the point where some surface mold occurs. having used the starter the flavours and crunch are not compromised at this point. I have added an additional 1/4 TBL per gallon of salt. This should help deter adverse bacteria while letting the Lactobaccilus do it’s job. Dumped in raw my hope is that as it dissolves and is absorbed by the cucumbers that the partial salinity wiil be higher at the top of the crock where infection is most likely to occur.
I think you might be on to something. It would be really interesting to measure the salinity of the brine overtime. I bet it would be better to work with weight. You would want the weight of the salt to relate to the combined weight of the water and cucumbers. I will have to do some googling.
Update #2: Did as you suggested Luke and worked out weights.
Initial Experiment: (Great Full Sours after 10 days@80F)
355 Grams Cucmbers (about 2/3 of a Quart basket)
173.1 Grams Salt (about 6 Tbls )
3000 Grams Water (about 12 Cups )
Salt to Cuke ratio 2.05:1
5 Gallon Experiment
11.36 Kilos of Cucumbers ( about 1/2 Bushel )
12.00 Kilos of Water ( about 48 Cups )
1.03 Kilos of Salt ( about 36 Tbl )
Salt to Cucumber Ratio of 11.03:1
Note: This is after the adjustment. Initial load was about 34:1 with the 1 Tbl Salt per Cup of Water.
Clearly the need is to use a much larger container, say 10 Gal for 1/2 Bushel pickling cuckes, or I will adjust the salt as time goes on. Too much and the fermentation stops. Too little and the cuckes don’t pickle and fermentation gets out of control. Would be nice if there was a simple way to measure salinity, say by electrical resistance and adust daily to maintain 5%. More Googling.
I used your recipe but must have done something wrong I’ve had the cukes brining for 10 days and they aren’t very tangy and the inside is very mushy. Any ideas what went wrong?
Hi Kevin, It could be that your cukes were too old/ripe. Using young, small pickling cukes helps guarantee a crisp pickle.
It also sounds like the lactic acid bacteria didn’t get started up and perhaps another strain took over. Did you do a good job of washing everything?
They may end up being soft inside, but they shouldn’t be mushy.
I pickled some cukes but they turned out to be very sour. Is there a way to reduce the “sourness”?
Please let me knpw.
Thanks,
Tony
Hi Tony, The longer you let them ferment, the more sour they get. I sample them every a couple of days and then just put them in the fridge when they have hit the right sourness.
I’ve been wanting to make pickles for a while so I’m glad found this post on your blog. I read it a few weeks ago and was finally inspired this week to step out into the creative world of fermenting pickles.
You can find that blog here:
http://gspear.wordpress.com/2009/02/14/death-sink-holes-a-daddy-day-pickles/
Thanks for the advice, recipe and inspiration. I’ll let you know how they turn out.
Please do! Best of luck with the pickles!
Laurie, they should come out pretty similar. That being said, every batch I have made has tasted a little different… but they were all great pickles. It is so easy to do, it is definitely worth a shot!
So will these come out to be like the good old, Jewish deli pickles? I call them garlic pickles but the local farmers market sells them as full sour. I’ve got a ton of “Rocky” cukes and really need to get moving on the pickling!
[...] 5 My favorite pickles aren’t made with vinegar. Now that cukes are showing up at the farmstands, why not try fermenting some? [...]
[...] to me, and this is the year that we’ve resolved to not only making jam, but can tomatoes and pickle cucumbers. So I figured I would start with the jam as tomato season is still another week or two away and [...]
I love Polish cucumbers, especially when they are only 3-4 day old and still half raw :) Long time I want to make them, but I can’t find small cucumbers here in London….
This is on my to do list for this summer. Thanks for the recipe and the links!
[...] prime fodder for pickling. This type of pickle does not rely on fermentation for its acidity, like sour pickles. Instead vinegar is used to preserve and flavor the [...]
For some reason, I’ve never been able to grow dill in my herb garden, so whenever I see a nice big bunch at the farmstand, I buy that and some little Kirby cukes, and make pickles. I love being able to control the sourness. Sometimes I want them very sour, other times just barely half-soured. It’s fun to play with those little bacteria.