sour pickles

After not being able to find a local store with local rice, I came home and got to work turning the lemon cucumbers I brought home yesterday from Mack Fleming (A Country Garden – 5 miles) into sour pickles. Here is what the cucumbers look like –

They are about the size of a lemon, hence the name. They do not, however, taste like lemons. They just taste like cucumbers.

For the fermentation, I based everything on the recipe for sour pickles in the Sandor Ellis Katz book, Wild Fermentation. The book is amazing, as it serves up history, methodology and recipes for fermenting and brewing just about anything.

For this fermentation I’m using a three gallon ceramic crock that I bought from Lehman’s Non-Electric, “products for simple self-sufficient living”. The basic recipe is 3 to 4 pounds of cucumbers, 3 to 4 heads of flowering dill (or any other form of dill you can find), 2 to 3 heads of garlic, and a pinch of black peppercorns. For the brine, a little less than a tablespoon of salt is used for each cup of water. The quantity of brine depends on each individual situation. I had to use about 12 cups of water for this batch.

The bottom layer of the crock is composed of the garlic, dill, and other seasonings. I used a lot of basil as well, both sweet basil and lemon basil from the garden. On top of that goes the cucumbers. After that the brine gets poured in and a plate is placed on top of everything. I used a wooden Sauerkraut board that I also bought from Lehman’s. On top of the plate or board a weight is used to keep everything submerged in the brine to ferment. I used a couple jars of water as weights.

Katz says that I should check on the pickles everyday and scoop off any mold that occurs where the air meets the brine. This is typical, he says, and will not bother the pickles. In a few days I should be able to eat one of the pickles and in a number of weeks the pickles will be fully sour.

The final step in the pickling process is to put a towel or piece of fabric over the crock to keep dust and flies out.

Should be interesting as this is my first attempt at home fermentation. Well, that’s not true, there was the lemon “musk” hard cider that some former housemates made, a terrible but addicting alcoholic brew that I kind of wish I had a bottle of right now…