More About Fermented Pickles

I just love pickling. There was a time that pickling intimidated me. Thoughts of sterilized jars, boiling cauldrons, and mushy vegetables all threatened to foil my pickling attempts. But once i'd pickled once, there was no turning back.
I have pickled with the traditional vinegar/water brine, but have found my preference to lie in fermented pickling. I find vinegar pickles to be too, well: vinegary and overly tangy. Fermented pickles have a more balanced and complex flavor. Fermentation she says! Why, that's even more intimidating! Actually, it's the easiest and most natural thing in the world only requiring a few necessary tools. All you really need is a crock and something to hold the veggies down. A beautiful ceramic crock with perfectly sized plate would be awesome. I don't have either of those things. Instead my pickling crocks consist of various sized mason jars, tupperware lids, and vinegar bottles. I'm a girl who knows how to scrimcoach.  My kitchen is currently bubbling some pickled okra picked up by a local farmer, some jalapenos from my front garden and some green tomatoes that i'm tired of planting around. Fermentation is great: from kimchi to sour pickles, fermented foods are rich in enzymes and good bacterias that are great for you health, and the recipe is simple.

Cukes, cayenne and grape leaves make for zesty pickles with great crunch.

Sour Pickles

• Smallish pickling cucumbers (blossom end removed), okra, green tomatoes, hot peppers, or just about any vegetable that is ripe (excluding the tomatoes) and freshly harvested/ undamaged.
• Salty brine: 3 Tablespoons salt per quart of water
• Grape or horseradish leaves (the tannins in the leaves give your pickles that desirable crrrunch!)
• Garlic
• Pinch pickling spices or peppercorns
• Fresh dill or cilantro

Play with this recipe choosing the quantities you like (ie tons of garlic if you like garlic) and herbs you prefer. Add hot peppers for some zest and experiment with different veggies to pickle as they come in season (you can even do greens!) The method for all is the same:
Place a few grape leaves in the bottom of the crock followed by the peppercorns/pickling spices and garlic. Fill your crock up to half full with the vegetable of your choosing and place your plate (or plastic lid - no metal please) on top. Pour the mixed brine solution over it all and weight the plate down with a water filled bottle or clean rock. You can use about any receptacle for your crock - just no reactive metals. Cover the whole to-do with cheesecloth to keep the flies out and watch your pickles come alive within days. Day one you'll see brighter green. Day two the green will begin to soften. Day three there will be bubbles (watch out for an over flowing crock - never overfill with the brine solution, only be sure the veg is fully covered) and by the end of a week or two you'll have delicious sour pickles. Try and skim any mold that may develop, but don't worry as mold is normal. Don't throw out your brine when you're done pickling, either. You can keep it in the fridge and sip as a digestive tonic, or use to pickle hard boiled eggs or other veggies in the refrigerator. Store your pickles in the fridge to slow down fermentation. The pickled peppers will mellow their heat with time.

My first batch of pickles: i filled the crock too high and awoke to brine bubbling all over the kitchen counter!

My fermentation crock setup - total jerry rigged operation

What's your favorite way to pickle?

This post and others I've written can be found at Yard Farm Austin.

Sour Pickle Recipe

Yum! I like pickles a lot! But i've found that the vinegar pickles i'm made in the past were just too vinegary and totally mush-fest.
I got the recipe for these pickles from Wild Fermentation, a super awesome book with a super helpful website, and author who will email you back with answers to your questions within hours! How cool is that?

Anyhoo - i gathered fresh produce from my garden:

• Small lemon cucumbers (a few a little too ripe and seedy, thus a little more mush factor than is generally considered ideal)
• Hot peppers
• dill
• Garlic

And procured some fresh grape leaves at The Natural Gardener. Add some seasonings i had on hand, some water and sea salt brine and voila: pickles! I struggled with the crock scenario - none of my receptacles seemed to have the right sized openings - but i performed my usual Miranda-scrimcoach and made it happen.

I used my large half gallon mason jar and stacked the grape leaves, garlic and peppers, seasonings and herbs followed by sliced cucumbers and topped with the brine (3 T sea salt per quart of distilled water). I then squished a pyrex lid into the narrow mouth of the mason jar and held it down with a vinegar bottle filled with water. Being Summer, fermentation happened pretty quick and turned over pickle results i was happy with in just one week. They're delicious and refreshing! And their flavor is much more multifaceted than plan old vinegar pickles. I repacked them into one quart container plus part of a pint and popped them in the fridge. They'll continue to ferment a tiny bit even in the fridge, but will stay pretty stable and keep quite a while.

There's tons of fermented brine leftover - i'll have to do SOMEthing with that.... i've heard you can drink it as a digestive tonic or use it as a soup stock. We'll see about that. Until then, we'll be enjoying our fresh pickles and relishing in summer's bounty (pun intended).

More Homemade Goodness: Mayonnaise

Wowee. Who would of thought little miss fat free would be making mayonnaise from scratch?
I got the recipe out of Nourishing Traditions, and agree with the author that the olive oil is a BIT much flavorwise: think i'll mix with some sunflower oil or something else next batch. In respect to the author and her copyright i won't post the specific recipe here, but the basics that i used are:

• fresh eggs from our girls
• extra virgin olive oil, in this case it was infused with garlic as i roasted some garlic in oil yesterday (450 degrees for about half an hour in a foil packet = amazingly spreadable delicious garlic)
• fresh squeezed lemon juice from my Meyer tree
• salt
• whey

I used my husband's grandmother's old food processor and mixed it all up into a thinner than store bought, rich, bright yellow, blend of delicious mayo. It's tangy and garlicy, a little too olive oily, but i can only imagine the delicious chicken salad this is going to make!
The addition of whey promotes lactofermentation that extends the shelf life of the mayo as well as providing more enzymes and greater nutrition. Apparently mayo normally only lasts about a week or two, with the whey the life is extended to several months, in the fridge of course. I'm letting it sit out to ferment a tad, well covered, until bed time and will then stick into the fridge. I need a bigger fridge, by the way in case anyone wants to donate one,  ;)

wish i had some smaller jars. 

note to self for next shopping trip to the feed store.

Some ideas of things to do with this delicious mayo:

• chicken salad with local pecans and golden raisons
• herbed mayo with fresh dill or parsley or cilantro
• tuna salad
• some kind of party dip
• egg salad - though seems a bit redundant and cholesterol heavy with all those eggs!

 Culmination of the last few days' projects. From left to right:

steel cut oats soaking in warm water with a bit of whey, destined to be breakfast porridge (soaking grains with whey or vinegar increases their digestibility and increases enzyme and nutrition content); today's rich and delicious mayonnaise; Kim chee fermenting for a few days before going into the fridge.

What are some of your favorite homemade vs. store bought condiments you like to make or eat?

Homemade Sour Cream

• 2 cups fresh cream, preferably raw
• 2-3 tablespoons cultured buttermilk
• sprinkle of salt

• Boil a canning jar to sterilize. Mix the cream and buttermilk together and pour into warm jar, mix hard and sit at room temperature overnight or until thick to your preference. Keep well covered and store in ridge up to 3 weeks. Can be mixed with spicy or other yummies to make a flavored dip, or added last minute to dishes you want a bit creamy.
  

PS: update. I skimmed this cream off myself. turns out it wasn't totally just cream.... so my sour cream isn't exactly creaming/thickening at this point --- but hopefully it will at least get a tangy sour taste so that i can mix it into things.


I belong to a local raw milk co-op: we get raw milk from a dairy in Schulenberg who raises pasture fed jersey cows. Organic goodness.  Since reading parts of Nourishing Traditions I have decided to radically change our diet. I have long preached eating as much homegrown, whole foods, as i say "eating close to the earth." But when i really thought about what we eat most often, i come up with : soy milk, tofu, cereal, canned beans, lunch meat, and purchased veg/chicken broth, low fat honey mustard salad dressing. These are overly processed things treated with chemicals and high heat, even when i buy as organic as possible. So what will i be doing differently?

To start with : lots of fermented foods. Kim chee using whey from cheese making and yoghurt making, cultured milk products from raw milk, soaking grains in whey and making my own warm cereals, sproating more grains, making my own ketchup, mustard, and mayo from homegrown tomatoes, mustard seeds, and chicken eggs. I also whipped together some very simple salad dressing: some fresh herbs in a bit of olive oil and a mixture of red and white vinegars. That's just a start. I'm motivated and ready to plant some mustard!

First thing i'm trying with this batch of raw milk is sour cream. I skimmed the cream off the top  so that our drinking milk will be lower fat. With the cream i will add a bit of cultured buttermilk and let sit overnight to produce sour cream. This isn't the same as the stuff you buy in the store as it is cultured and more alive. Won't be for cooking but can be added last minute to things to cream them up a bit and add some good milk without as much lactose that i can't digest.

I highly recommend chicken Nourishing Traditions out of your library - it is truly inspiring!  It reminded me of so many things i used to know and practice, and gave me some better information on some of the pieces of knowledge i had but didn't know how to explain to others.
Fats must be consumed to help absorb good vitamins and minerals and make our body function. Raw milk when cultured is a great source of good enzymes and vitamins that are more easily digested than pasteurized milk not fermented. I need to be eating more balanced whole things to be getting all the good things my body needs, and to help wash out the bad things like heavy metals that have found their way inside me.