Naturally Fermented Dill Pickles
Of all the food transformations that occur in a kitchen, few are as exciting as that of a cucumber into a pickle. Not because the process is so complicated, but because it’s so simple. Salt, water and a little time in a jar are all it takes to transform a cucumber into an entirely different food. What’s truly amazing is that so many people love pickles even if they’ve never tasted a really good one. A great pickle makes your eyes widen in surprise and your tongue tingle with pleasure. The sourness should make you salivate for more, rather than pucker and wince, and the texture should have a noticeable crunch when bitten into.
If it’s so easy to transform a cucumber into a pickle, though, then why are grocery store shelves filled with so many mediocre specimens? In a word, vinegar. Many store-bought brands use vinegar to pickle cucumbers because it guarantees a sour flavor and acts as a preservative. However, this method misses the entire point of pickled food. Using vinegar instead of brine (salt + water) prevents natural fermentation from occurring. Without natural fermentation the live bacteria cultures that turn pickles into a healthy probiotic food are absent. Not to mention that when pickles are soaking in vinegar for a long time it typically results in an overly sour flavor and rather limp texture.
There are brands of naturally fermented pickles to be found in stores, although they can be expensive. Making naturally fermented pickles at home is cost effective and easy to do and the anticipation of biting into that first spear is more fun than you might think. When you taste your first homemade pickle, be prepared for an audible crunch and a pleasantly tangy flavor. It will be ever so slightly infused with garlic and dill and taste fresher and snappier than a store-bought spear.
As much as you will love your first batch of homemade pickles, also be prepared for your mind to immediately start coming up with new variations. Why not spicy pickles? How about pickles flavored with star anise or cinnamon? What about herbs besides dill? And why stop with cucumbers? Carrots, cabbage, cauliflower…pretty much any vegetable is fair game.
This recipe is for one jar of pickles but can easily be doubled, which is a good thing. Once you’ve tasted the first batch, you just might find yourself feeling that no meal is complete without a homemade pickle on the side.
Ingredients:
- 6-8 small (3-4 inches long) un-waxed cucumbers. Look for pickling or “Kirby” cucumbers which are an ideal size. Persian cucumbers can also be used but don’t always stay as crispy.
- 1 1/2 cups filtered water
- 2 tablespoons sea salt (or other non-additive salt)
- 4-8 sprigs of fresh dill
- 2 cloves of garlic, peeled and cut in half and smashed with a knife
- 1 teaspoon peppercorns
- Plus: 1 wide-mouth 16-ounce glass canning jar (sterilized in boiling water and air-dried)
- Optional seasonings: red pepper flakes, hot chiles, mustard seeds, coriander seeds, fennel seeds, celery leaves, bay leaves, fresh herbs, onion, cinnamon stick, cloves
Instructions:
Combine salt and water and let sit until salt dissolves
After washing cucumbers, cut the tips off on both ends. Leaving the cucumbers whole or cutting them in half or into spears is a matter of personal preference. Experiment to see what you like best.
In the jar put 4 sprigs of dill, garlic cloves and peppercorns.
Tightly pack the cucumbers in the jar. Add remaining dill.
Cut one cucumber in half and set it horizontally on top of the other cucumbers –this will keep the cucumbers from floating up above the water in the jar when they shrink a little during the pickling process.
Pour the salt water into the jar. It should completely cover the cucumbers.
Set the lid loosely on top of the jar, don’t seal it. Let the jar sit undisturbed at room temperature. You’ll know fermentation has begun when you see bubbles rising to the top of the jar and the water becomes cloudy. A thin layer of white scum might also form on the surface of the water. This is harmless and can be scooped away with a clean spoon. However, trust your nose. If the pickles smell bad while fermenting, throw them out.
It will probably take 3-10 days before the pickles are done. Taste the pickles during this timeframe to see if the texture and flavor are to your liking. This is the only sure sign that your pickles are done. Once you’ve decided they’re done, tighten the lid and store the pickles in the refrigerator. Because there is no vinegar to preserve the pickles, they will only keep about a week. If the flavor of the pickles is not vinegary enough for you, try drizzling a little vinegar on the spears right before eating.
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Posted By: Worker Bee
Awesome. I’ve been eating a lot of sauerkraut with vinegar in it lately but I think I’ll give this a try.
Pickled cabbage is supposed to have 20 times the bioavailable amount of vitamin C than raw cabbage so I imagine pickling things is an easy way to absorb nutrients.
I just watched a video interview with Mat LaLonde and I remember him saying that fermented foods contain more bioavailable nutrients compared to non fermented foods.
It makes sense… I would say the probiotics help for sure!
This recipe is almost word for word what Alton Brown has, and it is much more fun with a crock or butter churn.
http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/alton-brown/dill-pickles-recipe/index.html
Great episode this recipe comes from and it is showing again on Feb 21, 2012.
http://www.foodnetwork.com/good-eats/dill-icious/index.html
I seal the jars (pickling jars with rubber seals). The pickling liquid leaks out of the jars but they last a few months.
You can make a delicious soup with the pickled cucumber. Stir-fry some grated or chopped pickled cucumbers in butter on medium heat for two or three minutes. Stir in some beef broth (and some of the meat) and some pickle liquid (to your taste) and cook for about 10 minutes or less. (Before my primal days I added some cubed boiled potatoes but it is just as nice without). To serve, mix in some sour cream or spoon sour cream into each bowl before ladling in soup. Enjoy!
great timing Mark! I was just about to try making my own sauerkraut, I’ll give this a go too!
Cutting the ends off is very important, but I can’t remember why. It might have something to do with enzymes at the blossom and/or stem end???
Maybe an expert can chime in, just to make sure people don’t ruin their pickles…YUM!
Cutting the ends off,is supposed to keep them crunchy.
Though I’ve heard cutting them into halves and deseeding them is supposed to do the same…cause nobody likes mushy snotty dill pickles.
There is an enzyme in the flower end that will cause the pickle to go soggy, so cutting off the ends makes sure that doesn’t happen.
Cutting the ends off isn’t that critical. I’ve made successful fermented pickles many times and it doesn’t seem to matter.
What DOES matter is that the vegetables you use in your ferments are VERY FRESH. This post would have been better-timed if it had appeared in July, when pickling cukes are available locally all over the place. Making ferments from vegetables that have been shipped thousands of kilometers and then have languished on store shelves for days is just asking for nasty-smelling slime, not delicious crunchy sour pickles.
(I guess it’s good for the folks in Aus & NZ though! Maybe I should stop being so Northern-Hemisphere-centric.)
Indeedy! My cucumber vines are going nuts here in Melbourne, as are the grape vines. Sadly the first batch of dill pickles I made before Christmas failed…..maybe it was too hot, or I didn’t use enough salt. They smelled soooo good for the first four or five days, but then ‘something’ happened and they got mushy and smelled a lot less appealing.
I’m heading out to the vegie patch tonight to pick some more cukes and try again. Wish me luck.
Oh and another tip for cucumber pickles – to keep them crunchy, add some well-washed grape leaves (as in, leaves you pick from a grape vine, also not currently available in the northern hemisphere). The tannins in the leaves help keep the crunch in the pickles. I use 2-4 leaves (depending on size) per quart (litre) jar.
Fresh grape leaves do help keep the pickles crunchy. An alternative is to use oak leaves. These work in the same manner.
Grape leaves work. I don’t wash them though; I pick them from wild growing vines and just rinse. I do the same with my homegrown cucumbers, just rinse them. Washing them too much removes the local wild fermenting yeasts that make the pickling process go forward.
In my first batch of pickles I used one big leaf per quart and all 6 jars came out great even though they were stored on the bottom (read floor) of my pantry and some were there for 6 or 7 months. In the batch I made this past spring, I forgot the grape leaves and they all turned to mush (4 quarts) in just a few months. I poured the juice off to marinate meats in, but the mushy cucumbers I gave back to Mother Earth in my garden.
As someone else mentioned, I’ve heard that oak leaves work as well as grape leaves, but I haven’t tried them yet.
I have fermented several different things. As far as I know, cucumbers are the only things that need the grape leaves to keep them crunchy. I’ve made sauerkraut (different variations) with no leaves and it seems you cannot mess up cabbage. I fermented Serrano peppers and they came out great – wonderful flavor and crunchy – no leaves.
I fermented kale and some eggplant relish this past spring – just now opened a jar of each – next time I will use grape leaves in the relish for sure (although they are not as mushy as the cucumbers were), and maybe just add some kale to cabbage instead of a whole jar of just kale.
My advice is if you are using an untried recipe for fermenting, just make a small quantity (a pint or just one quart) before risking too much of your good organic produce. And use spices.
The juice produced from fermenting makes a wonderful salad dressing: I mix half juice and half olive oil. Wow!
I don’t know if its just me but I love the taste of pickled gherkins. Can’t live without them.
I LOVE cucumbers and pickles. I don’t recall every enjoying a homemade pickle. I’ll have to get going on this right away!
I’ll sometimes put a tablespoon or so of whey into each jar to get the process started a bit faster. It seems to work well.
I also second the grape leaf suggestion! Particularly important if you’re slicing the cukes rather than leaving them whole.
I am lucky enough to have fermented pickles sold near me, but they are expensive. Crispy new pickles, just barely salty, are amazing.
You can use this brine again for new batches of pickles
Many cultures have a traditional variant of the standing brine crock – and they throw anything worthy of pickling into it and keep it going.
The previous owners of my house in Michigan were Ukrainian – sold the house when they were in their 90′s to move to a condo. They always kept a garden here and left behind a 12 gallon pickling crock in the basement canning kitchen. 12 gallons! Just think…
Unfortunately, it was cracked so not usable any longer for food prep. I had to replace it. It makes dandy firewood storage for the family room, though.
Pickled okra is one of my favorites – but I’ll have to check to see if okra is on the “allowed” list for primal eating.
This sounds alright, but are they really sour? I mean, I love some good pickles, but mainly the ones with extra garlic, that are preserved in vinigar.
Just a thought though, anybody ever thought about using some dark, natural balsamic vinigar to make these?
Speaking from personal experience, if you cover some sliced cucomber with basamic vinigar and leave them in the fridge for about 3 days, you get some really delicious results.
Yes! I have used balsamic vinegar that way. I use balsamic as my first preference for vinegar whenever I can – and make sure to get the real stuff, well aged, no additives, etc. My staple salad dressing is balsamic vinegar with extra virgin olive oil and a rustic Tuscan herb mix that is nothing but dried herbs – no additives – and a little water. I reverse the usual oil to vinegar ratio so its more oil than vinegar.
I used to make these all the time back when I had a little more kitchen space. They are super easy and delisioso!
I’ve been meaning to make my own pickles and sauerkraut for ages.. need to make a conscious effort to add more fermented foods to my diet!
Pickled food is a big thing where I live during the winter time, when there are less fresh, natural vegetables available than in the hot seasons.
Can anyone explain why sauerkraut is good for months (made with brine) and pickles are only good for a week? Just wondering…,
I think that may be an error. Although there’s no vinegar, there is lactic acid from the bacteria. I’ve certainly kept my homemade fermented pickles far longer than a week.
My fermented pickles (with a grape leaf in ea jar) kept for several months without refrigeration. Once I open a jar I put it in the fridge, but the unopened quarts I put on the bottom shelf of the pantry. All the salt and lactic acid keep them from spoiling.
Just smell of them when you open – if they smell bad, then toss them. But they won’t.
I agree. I worked at a living historic farm for a while and we kept our brined pickles for quite a while more than a week (mustard pickles). They fermented for a little over a week and then were put into jars and into a cool location and lasted for- as I recall- about a month and a half before they were eaten. However, after about a week or so they started to get a bit floppier than when they first started as they didn’t have lime in them, so perhaps he’s referring to the crisp texture as opposed to the edible shelf-life?
Awesome! I’ve been making saurkraut every couple weeks since reading about that on this post (who knew so simple?) and will now make pickles. Love them in my daily BAS. Just salt, water, and a few herbs? Can’t wait to try…
Another type of cucumber that might work well in this recipe is the so-called “gourmet” cucumbers. They are small – about five inches long, have tender skins (no need to peel), no seeds, no spines, and come pre-packaged in bags. I’ve seen them in several markets, including Sam’s Club and Costco.
Deja vu! My breakfast this morning was exactly this topic. I had some older man begging me to leave some pickling cukes for him as I was buying up the supply this summer at the Farmer’s Market. I made 10 qts. I use my grandma’s recipe which is similar. Per qt – 1 garlic clove, shake of crushed red peppers and 1 T salt. If I’m out of dill, I sub in 2 tsp dill seed. Once fermented, I place them in a cool area (frig in summer, cold basement in winter). I still have two qts left that I made in August. I do spears for the bigger cukes, but little ones, I just cut off the tip and make a couple of slits. They stay nice and crunchy.
Has anyone ever done this with carrot ‘peelings’ ie sliced with a potato peeler. I was given them stir fried yesterday, and they were fantastic, but I imagine they would be equally good pickled
Yes, you may want to take a look at either Nourishing Traditions or Wild Fermentation, the latter is all about fermenting foods, and the former has a nice section on fermenting veggies. Fermented carrots are great with a bit of garlic or ginger (or both) thrown in.
I really want to do this. I have yet to try pickling any foods and I love pickles. Although I think everyone loves pickles.
A friend of mine made pickled okra and it was amazing. This is sort of random, but is there a reason why it seems that pregnant woman always want pickles?
this recipe sounds great! FYI if you’re looking for fresher pickling cukes in the winter, try your local Asian market – they often seem to stock pickling cukes regularly and they’re always very crisp.
We just made these the other night. Still waiting to try them. The kids have been pestering me for pickles and shopping at Costco left us with lots of cucumbers. Thanks for sharing this!
I really don’t like pickles… But I LOVE cucumbers! (: close enough, right?
Thanks!
Dill pickles….yummmmmmm!!!! This would be perfect alongside one of my egg wraps…or a turkey sandwich with paleo bread. Or just eat one straight out of the jar…the best way to eat them right???
very interesting article! our occasional eating of hotdogs MUST be accompanied by pickles. now we get to customize it ourselves!
I wonder if you could make pickles by slicing the cucumbers in half and scooping out the seeds so that you make a little boat. Then when you want a hot dog – let the pickle be thy bun!
“Because there is no vinegar to preserve the pickles, they will only keep about a week.”
Mark and the Worker Bees, did you really mean to say this? The point of fermenting vegetables is to preserve them, but in the old timey way, with the lactic acid from the bacteria.
Let me second that. My pickles usually need to stay in the refrigerator at least several weeks before they even reach the consistency I like. And they last as long as I store them there.
That sounds crazy simple. Making these! Need to find Kirby pickles. They look like what I refer to as baby cukes?? Probably not the same thing, though? Unless they are.
Thanks for this.
I remember my dad making pickles by the barrel when I was a kid. And he’d tell stories of his dad, a Wisconsin farmer during the Depression, and the threshing crews in the 1930s that would come around and at the end of the day want their pay…and a chance to grab a pickle out of grandpa’s barrels with their grubby hands.
Dad/Grandpa’s recipe was never written down and is lost. But I do remember as a kid stirring salt into the water until an egg would float and the white scum you mention needing to be skimmed from the top.
I’m definately going to give these a try. I’ll probably never match the taste those pickles I remember from 40+ years ago but it will bring back a lot of good memories in the process.