Fermented Pickles

Cooking Discussions Cooking, Cookbooks, Ingredients
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I’ve only made fermented pickle-pickles 3 or maybe 4 times since the comment above almost 2 years old. I’ve done some kraut and cauliflower too, but that’s about it.

The local grocer has nice looking small-ish cukes at half price, so I got several pounds and yesterday afternoon put up 5, 1-quart jars at 3% salt, garlic, dill (didn’t have fresh, which makes it hard to keep bits from interacting at the surface), mustard and coriander seeds.

This time I boiled the above in the brine for a couple of minutes, just wondering if it’ll integrate the flavors better, and also hoping to water log the seeds so they’d be less of a float hazard. Then I split the brine 2 quarts, 3 quarts and put a good load of turmeric into the 2 quarts, to see if I liked it. Maybe too much - it’s purty yeller.

I also did about 2x the amount of bay leaves hoping for no mush this time. Both laurel bay and tejpatta (different plant but similar cooking qualities). I met 4 of my retired work buds for beer and dinner last night and mentioned the hopefully soon-to-be pickles (we all talk a lot about foods and cooking) and one of the guys said he lays up a bunch of his oak tree leaves around September (just before they start to fall), freezes them, and uses those for his source of tannins when making pickles the rest of the year.

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The one time we made fermented pickles we used grape leaves. IIRC they were nice and crispy.

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Thanks. I’ve never seen a local source (and I did look specifically for them). That’s how my friend got on about the oak leaves, because I’d mentioned not finding the grape leaves. But I bet I could get them online. Can’t you get just about anything online these days?

I just did a search on the tejpatta leaves, and it looks like on average they have more tannins than regular bay laurel. So I’m keeping my fingers crossed.

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Welp, I’m on round 2. All 5 quarts of pickles went to mush (tasted okay but really weren’t done creating yet). As mentioned above, I boiled most of the herbs etc but did not boil the bay leaves then, because I’d heard something before about many types of tannin compounds breaking down at high temps.

I did some searching on the tannins in bay laurel and tejpatta leaves, and it seems some of the compounds in those can break down under heat, but you can get away with extracting more than you break down by using lower temps. So I boiled the salt/herb mix and let it cool to about 150 before adding the leaves. Hopefully that extracted some extra tannins to degrade the lysozymes early.

Wish me luck, peeps.

If this doesn’t work, I’ll be asking Uncle Jeffie for a grape leaf delivery.

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I don’t have any advice for you. It was back in the 80s that we made the pickles. I don’t remember exactly what process we used. I’m pretty sure we used a 5 gallon bucket and grape leaves because we had several grape vine. Good luck.

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Why? I’ve made fermented pickles dozens of times and never done this. The only mush problems I’ve had were when the cukes were too old, or I didn’t trim their stems properly.

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I make bread and butter pickles every couple of years, and have tried three different methods to try and maintain some crispness in the final product. I’ve had mixed results using grape leaves, and the low temperature pasteurization method didn’t seem to work at all for me. I’m most satisfied with Ball’s PickleCrisp, which is calcium chloride granules. One jar will be a lifetime supply for me, because the dosage is something like a quarter teaspoon per quart.

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I have no idea why I’m having troubles. I’ve always trimmed the flower end, and sometimes get great pickles, and sometime half go to mush, and sometimes all go to mush.

If you could figure it out for me, I’d send you a couple of 1934 quarters in mint condition.

Just kidding - all my 1934’s are heavily circulated.

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:rofl: I would have no idea what to do with them anyway.

When I select cucumbers to pickle, if I haven’t grown them myself, I choose smallish ones and give them a squeeze. If there’s any give, I reject them. Maybe that’s a strategy you could try?

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Eagerly following!

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Thanks Steve. I might try the calcium. I remember my grandparents used lime (calcium hydroxide). I wonder if for some reason the chloride salt works better hydroxide, because Mrs. Wages brand (maker of the pickling salt I used to buy) has both and simply calls the hydroxide salt pickling lime, whereas the chloride is referred to as XTRA CRUNCH.

@small_h - agree. These are fairly small, most are 3-4 inches, and nice and firm. I had some that were 5 inches that got turned into tzatziki, which is my wife’s (nearly) all-purpose condiment and dip.

The quarters are worth about their weight in silver, which is about 5-6 bucks. Found some in a drawer at my in-laws’ old place. At first I thought “holy crap, this is 70 mint condition 1964 quarters!” (which are worth considerably more than $6), but turned out there were only two in the tube, covering the other 68 quarters of various dates 1964 and back. 1964 was the last year before they started making the copper sandwich quarters (and dimes and other) that we have now.

But it really would have been just like my FIL to have gotten and saved a bunch of them freshly minted.

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FWIW…… re boiled or not boiled water…….I make dill pickles using the 2nd Avenue Deli cookbook recipe for kosher dills. It calls for 3/4 cup of kosher salt dissolved in one gallon of BOILING water (brought to room temp). The pickles are crisp when refrigerated after six days and will stay crisp for a couple of months.

Note: I use Persian cucumbers because of their size and because I live near a great Persian market that always has a huge supply of them.

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One more thought: I always leave my brine out uncovered overnight to let the chlorine evaporate out. I’m not sure if that would affect the texture of the cukes, but you wouldn’t get good fermentation, because chloride kills bacteria (which you need).

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Yeah I use the fridge filtered water. LG claims it filters out chlorine, but…?

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Can’t hurt to leave it out. Just to see.

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I’m interested in this idea of using filtered water instead of tap. Because of the chlorine possibly impeding fermentation. Anyone have thoughts on boiling the water vs. filtered? Google says boiling removes chlorine. Are there other issues?

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It all depends on your local water quality. For just chlorine, you can boil water, for say 5 minutes in an open pot, and let it cool, in a covered pot to keep most airborne spore from collecting in the water. For fermenting, you can also use distilled water.

One advantage to boiling water is that it drives most of the oxygen out. That’s not a bad thing, since lactic ferments are best done in anaerobic conditions.