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).