When I was a teen-ager, my father and I made 15 jars of salt brine, naturally fermented cucumber pickles in the Fall, with fresh, newly-harvested, crisp small pickling cucumbers.
I wrote down the recipe and all its steps of production and still have it. One thing we found as critical, was to thoroughly wash and scrub the cucumbers with a scrub brush to remove any earth, and then soak them for half an hour in ice water (water with a lot of ice cubes)--before doing anything further with them.
More recently (now that I am 80), I told my 13-year-old grand daughter I used to make pickles.
She likes to bake, cook and experiment-- and asked me to teach her- working alongside her making my own jar while she made hers.
I purchased 2 basic "pickle kits" for us, made by Mason Jars, that includes a jar, screw-on plastic ring cap, and a silicone rubber gas check that is flat, makes a tight fit over the top edge of the jar mouth, and has what looks like a small nipple in the middle. The nipple is scored with an X at the very tip, and is designed to allow pressure of gas from fermentation to escape as it is produced, but contracts and self-closes when pressure stabilizes--to prevent entry of outside air.
The kit also includes a heavy-duty glass weight with a molded glass handle on top, and is the same outside diameter as the inside diameter of the mouth of the Mason large-mouth jar.
My pickle jar produced perfect, crisp pickles. But the only dill I could buy was small bottles of dried powdered dill leaves, or small fresh-cut sprigs of dill stems and leaves. As it turned out, neither provided the strong dill flavor I remembered from my youth, when we purchased and used freshly-harvested dill plants , with stiff stems, leaves and flower heads, in the late Summer/early Fall
My grand daughter's pickles turned out good, she said--but grew what she thought was mold on the surface of the brine, and she discarded the batch
I made two sets of salt brine pickles over the past couple of months. The first bottles sat in the coolest place in the house (a basement shower stall with the bathroom door closed and lights off.)
They were crisp and delicious after two weeks, and I transferred them to the fridge.
The second batch I put immediately in the fridge, and checked them every couple of days. After two weeks, they had not started fermenting and had not changed from dark green to light green. The fridge was too cold to start and continue fermentation.
So I moved them to the basement shower stall, and they immediately began fermenting. I should note that I had also used some other, smaller wide-mouth jars with metal lids, and just turned down the lids with a little space left to allow for overflow of the brine and release of gases.
The jars were set on an enameled metal baking pan to catch the overflow.
I also had to buy a set of 4 Mason plastic caps for the jars, as the kits only came with ring closures that held the silicone gas release cover strips in place-- not designed for permanent storage of the pickles after fermenting. I purchased the caps from the same store where I bought the Mason pickle kits, sold in a box of four.
As I was now using several non-Mason brand jars, I needed more glass weights. I found them on Amazon, a box of four imported from China by Country Trading Company. The box says they are for wide mouth jars made by Ball and by Kilner. They are heavy-duty cast clear glass with a square handle on top. They are designed in New Zealand and imported into Canada. For more info go to www.countrytrading.co They are located in Stoke, New Zealand.
As I was unable to purchase mature dill plants with stiff stems, leaves and flower heads in July, I purchased organic Tunisian dill seeds from Organic Matters, in Nelson, British Columbia, Canada. I have not tried this batch of pickles yet, but am hoping the dill seeds (several tablespoons of them per jar) will generate the dill flavor I am after.
Bruce Koffler
bkoffler@securesearchinc.com
