A tale of pickles
Jan. 28th, 2016 04:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sarea
This is going to be a way-too long post about one of my favorite things to eat: dill pickles. I generally like to eat them with sandwiches, even strange concoctions like peanut butter with pickles (don't knock it til you've tried it. I'm serious).
I love the Claussen pickles that are in the refrigerated section... I've gotten the regular shelf pickles before and they're nasty. And dill pickles at delis are generally very good.
I've never tried to make my own, despite enjoying them greatly. A couple of weeks ago, I decided to rectify this. I looked up several recipes, and ended up going with one that sounded the easiest. It used white vinegar, apple cider vinegar, and various spices. I made pickle spears and pickle chips, and they were both good. Good enough that I even posted the recipe to LJ so that I could find it again later. But after eating nearly the entire jar of pickle chips, I realized that they were good, but the taste wasn't quite... right. The flavor of the vinegar was coming across too strong, and I wondered how Claussen made their pickles taste the way they tasted. Special vinegar? Real dill? A different blend of spices?
I remembered seeing that Alton Brown also had a recipe for pickles, and decided to consult that to see what he did differently. I had skipped over his the first time around, because he was pickling whole cucumbers, which I did not want to do. Reading his recipe more carefully, I realized that he didn't use vinegar at all in his pickle preparation. Instead he let them ferment. Whaaaat? I thought. Then realized: Hey, that's exactly how kimchi is made.
What a revelation! So I started again, this time doing it the Alton Brown way. Bought 3lbs of Persian cucumbers, a bunch of baby dill, and a gallon of distilled water. (Aside: Tap water has chlorine and possibly chloramine in it, which will kill the microorganisms needed for fermentation. You can easily remove the chlorine by setting out tap water in a jug for 24 hours -- which is what I do before pouring the water through my Pur filter -- but I don't think chloramine can be gotten rid of the same way, and Alton didn't mention if that would be a danger for microorganisms. I don't even know if my tap water HAS chloramine. I just took the safe route.)
I followed his recipe almost exactly (the only difference was that I did not use "pickling salt." I looked it up, and it can either mean salt that's fine-grained enough to dissolve easily in water, or it can mean fine salt plus spices. Since he doesn't specify what his pickling salt contained, I figured I couldn't know for sure in any case, so why should I spend the time or energy to find special salt? He provides a weight for the salt, so I just measured out the appropriate amount in kosher salt, and dissolved it in a small amount of hot water, then added that salted hot water to the room temperature water and shook the whole jug thoroughly, several times). The first day and a half or so, the jar stayed totally clear. It was quite pretty.
The second day, it was getting a little cloudy. I didn't remember Alton mentioning this, so I was a little concerned, but decided to wait and see. On the positive side, because it's an open-air jar, I could sniff it, and IT SMELLED AMAZING. JUST LIKE REAL PICKLES!!!!!!!! I have to say, that made me really excited.
Day 2 (pictured with a gallon jug to show how big the jar of pickles is):
By the third day, which is the first day you're supposed to disturb it in order to skim off "scum" (mine didn't have any), it had gotten SUPER cloudy, and dark at the bottom. Again, I don't know if this is cause for concern, but as of last night it still smelled nice and pickle-y.
One of the ways you're supposed to be able to tell if fermentation is working is if you see little bubbles. I wasn't sure what was meant by that -- like, how little is little? But a close look last night gave me the answer, and confirmed that the pickles are, in fact, fermenting! Yay! The little bubbles are really tiny little bubbles that you can see in a glass of champagne or soda when it's been sitting for awhile. Nothing ostentatious, just a little stream of bubbles rising to the top. I even created a GIF of it, that shows it pretty well (it's a really big file though):
The fermentation process is supposed to finish on the sixth or seventh day. I'm going to try one on the sixth day and see how they taste. I have this fear that they're going to spoil rather than just nicely ferment, but I hope it's unfounded!
I love the Claussen pickles that are in the refrigerated section... I've gotten the regular shelf pickles before and they're nasty. And dill pickles at delis are generally very good.
I've never tried to make my own, despite enjoying them greatly. A couple of weeks ago, I decided to rectify this. I looked up several recipes, and ended up going with one that sounded the easiest. It used white vinegar, apple cider vinegar, and various spices. I made pickle spears and pickle chips, and they were both good. Good enough that I even posted the recipe to LJ so that I could find it again later. But after eating nearly the entire jar of pickle chips, I realized that they were good, but the taste wasn't quite... right. The flavor of the vinegar was coming across too strong, and I wondered how Claussen made their pickles taste the way they tasted. Special vinegar? Real dill? A different blend of spices?
I remembered seeing that Alton Brown also had a recipe for pickles, and decided to consult that to see what he did differently. I had skipped over his the first time around, because he was pickling whole cucumbers, which I did not want to do. Reading his recipe more carefully, I realized that he didn't use vinegar at all in his pickle preparation. Instead he let them ferment. Whaaaat? I thought. Then realized: Hey, that's exactly how kimchi is made.
What a revelation! So I started again, this time doing it the Alton Brown way. Bought 3lbs of Persian cucumbers, a bunch of baby dill, and a gallon of distilled water. (Aside: Tap water has chlorine and possibly chloramine in it, which will kill the microorganisms needed for fermentation. You can easily remove the chlorine by setting out tap water in a jug for 24 hours -- which is what I do before pouring the water through my Pur filter -- but I don't think chloramine can be gotten rid of the same way, and Alton didn't mention if that would be a danger for microorganisms. I don't even know if my tap water HAS chloramine. I just took the safe route.)
I followed his recipe almost exactly (the only difference was that I did not use "pickling salt." I looked it up, and it can either mean salt that's fine-grained enough to dissolve easily in water, or it can mean fine salt plus spices. Since he doesn't specify what his pickling salt contained, I figured I couldn't know for sure in any case, so why should I spend the time or energy to find special salt? He provides a weight for the salt, so I just measured out the appropriate amount in kosher salt, and dissolved it in a small amount of hot water, then added that salted hot water to the room temperature water and shook the whole jug thoroughly, several times). The first day and a half or so, the jar stayed totally clear. It was quite pretty.
The second day, it was getting a little cloudy. I didn't remember Alton mentioning this, so I was a little concerned, but decided to wait and see. On the positive side, because it's an open-air jar, I could sniff it, and IT SMELLED AMAZING. JUST LIKE REAL PICKLES!!!!!!!! I have to say, that made me really excited.
Day 2 (pictured with a gallon jug to show how big the jar of pickles is):
By the third day, which is the first day you're supposed to disturb it in order to skim off "scum" (mine didn't have any), it had gotten SUPER cloudy, and dark at the bottom. Again, I don't know if this is cause for concern, but as of last night it still smelled nice and pickle-y.
One of the ways you're supposed to be able to tell if fermentation is working is if you see little bubbles. I wasn't sure what was meant by that -- like, how little is little? But a close look last night gave me the answer, and confirmed that the pickles are, in fact, fermenting! Yay! The little bubbles are really tiny little bubbles that you can see in a glass of champagne or soda when it's been sitting for awhile. Nothing ostentatious, just a little stream of bubbles rising to the top. I even created a GIF of it, that shows it pretty well (it's a really big file though):
The fermentation process is supposed to finish on the sixth or seventh day. I'm going to try one on the sixth day and see how they taste. I have this fear that they're going to spoil rather than just nicely ferment, but I hope it's unfounded!
