food

Crazy Awesome, Super Easy Dill Pickles

Leave a Comment

These pickles rock.

They are crunchy, salty and full of great dill and garlic flavor with that awesome lacto-fermented tang that is highly addictive and unique.

I went a little nuts on planting cucumbers this year with these pickles in mind.

lacto fermented pickles

 

Luckily you can get great pickling cucumbers at most farmers markets and farm stands in the U.S. this time of year so even if you don’t have cucs ripening by the minute outside your door you can still make a batch of these.

lactofermented pickles

lactofermented pickles

The three best things about these pickles are;

  1. They are lacto-fermented (no canning required)
  2. They are lacto-fermented (they are an incredibly healthy “live” probiotic-filled food)
  3. They are lacto-fermented (which in my book equals delicious)

I’ve written many times about my love of lacto-fermented food, including with my recipe for saurkraut, kimchi, and pickled vegetables.   They have a unique tang and je ne sais quoi that can’t be found in any other food.  Plus, the naturally occurring “good bacteria” (probiotics) has improved my immune system dramatically.

Like most lacto-fermented food, this recipe is really just a guideline.  The only important ratio is the 5 tablespoons of sea salt to the 2 quarts of water; the garlic and dill are more of a personal preference.

lactofermented pickles

 

Keeping the cucumbers whole helps keep them crunchy!

lactofermented pickles

 

Another thing that helps keep them crunchy is the addition of grape leaves.  There is a tannin in the leaves that does this, oak leaves and horseradish leaves can also be used but grapevines are a bit easier to come by.

lactofermented pickles

lactofermented pickles

 

I have a disgusting amount of wild grapevines in my backyard so I didn’t have to look hard to harvest for this batch of pickles.

The grape leaves also provide a bit of a protective layer for the top of the brine, which can get a little filmy sometimes, more on that in the recipe.

lactofermented pickles

 

 

Start by laying down half of the leaves in the bottom of your jar, followed by half the dill and garlic.

Fill the jar with the cucumbers, packing as tightly as possible.

lacto fermented pickles

lacto fermented pickles

Stuff the rest of the dill and garlic down into the holes.

 

lacto fermented pickles

Fill the jar with the salt and water brine solution (details in the recipe), leaving at least an inch of headroom.

 

lacto fermented pickles

Lots more details in the following “recipe”.

Crazy Awesome Super Easy Dill Pickles

Ingredients
  • Large Glass Jar (holds at least 2 quarts, preferably with a wide mouth)
  • 8-15 Pickling Cucumbers
  • 5 Tablespoons Sea Salt*
  • 2 Quarts Water*
  • 3-5 Cloves Garlic
  • 1-3 Heads Dillweed
  • 4-6 Big Grapevine Leaves (washed)
Instructions
  1. *The amount of brine (water and salt solution) you need depends on the size and amount of cucumbers you use. This recipe will probably leave you with leftover brine that can be saved for your next batch.
  2. Dissolve the salt in 1 cup of boiling water and let cool then combine it with the rest of the water to create the pickling brine
  3. In the bottom of a clean jar place 2-3 grape leaves
  4. Add half of the garlic and half of the dill
  5. Add all of your cucumbers, try to pack them in as tight as possible (it’s a bit of a tetris game)
  6. In the nooks and crannies place the rest of your garlic and dill
  7. Pour in the pickling brine, covering the top cucumbers completely but leaving at least an inch of “headroom”
  8. Wiggle the jar a bit to release any air that was trapped at the bottom
  9. Cover the top of the brine with the remaining grape leaves
  10. Cover the jar with a lid or a plastic bag secured with a rubberband (if, like me, you got big jars but not big lids!)
  11. Leave on the counter to ferment for 5-8 days
  12. The cucumbers will quickly change from bright green to a more earthy, darker green and the clear brine will start to cloud a little
  13. A white film may appear on the top, this is just fine and can be poured off once the pickles are done
  14. After 5-8 days taste for flavor, the pickles should still be crunchy and should look and feel “pickled” all the way through (not just on the surface. At first they will be more salty than tangy. At this point the top grape leaves can be tossed, the top bit of brine poured off if filmy, and the jar moved to the fridge. Pickles can be kept in the fridge for several months, although the crunch will diminish with time.

I’m pretty simple with my pickle-eating; they are usually eaten straight from the jar while making lunch or occasionally cut thin for a sandwich.  Either way, these pickles f-ing rock! You should probably go make a batch..or five…asap.

 

My Flexitarian Ways

2 Comments

I didn’t eat meat for over thirty years.

My parents both became “vegetarians” back in the seventies.  They weren’t together yet so it wasn’t something they came to as a couple.

Mom’s story involves something about a drug-induced state (t’was the 70’s…and my name is Faith) where she looked in the refrigerator only to find several different types of lunch meat and little else.  In short her, ahem, heightened awareness we’ll call it, brought her to the conclusion that meat was gross and not fit for human consumption.

I haven’t heard if my papa had an exact moment in this way but he did work on a dairy farm in North Carolina while living on a commune as a young, twenty-something so it’s possible.

I put vegetarian in quotation because neither of my parents stopped eating fish or seafood and so it came to be that my sisters, brother, and I were raised “pescatarians”.

But for real, who uses “pescatarian” and besides, growing up without consuming hot dogs and pepperoni in rural West Virginia received a response not that different to had I been a gluten free-paleo-vegan-tree nut free-airatarian.  Basically, “huh?” followed by “it’s not meat, it’s just chicken, eat it”.

And so I remained a, quote-unquote vegetarian for my first three decades.

There were certainly a few exceptions.  As a kid I had a matzo ball soup clause, at home we would make these Jewish dumplings vegetarian but when celebrating Passover at the grandparents or friend’s houses I would devour up to three bowls of the chicken broth soaked balls without pause.

As I got older and started traveling to other countries I became less concerned if my dish was truly vegetarian or not.  It wasn’t uncommon to find bits of meat parts in my veggie stir-fry while eating beside the locals in Vietnam.   I also became more realistic; understanding that unless I was cooking the food from scratch I was no doubt consuming all kinds of meat in various forms unbeknownst to me; especially in the form of fats and broths.

But I held out for a long time on actually taking a real, conscious bite of meat.  It didn’t appeal to me.  I can be a picky eater (used to be much more so) and the smell, look, and thought simply didn’t appeal to me.

Until it did.

First I got less picky.  Ceviche and sushi were my gateway.  While living in Peru I was to embarrassed to tell the locals that I was grossed out at the thought of eating essentially raw fish so I just went ahead and had a bite. (ceviche is “cooked” in lime juice which changes the texture to somewhere between raw and cooked but no heat is ever applied).  It was amazing.  I had many more bites. Next I started ordering more than just the cooked or veggie rolls at the sushi bar.

Then I started cutting way back on soy and processed vegetarian foods, that could be another post but in short they just didn’t feel like a good staple any more for me.

I got bored.  And curious.  And hungry.  For the first time in my life I started to feel like I was missing out by not at least taking a few bites if the situation was right.

Over the last year I’ve started taking nibbles of meat when it looks, smells, and feels appealing to me.  First it was sweet potatoes cooked in duck fat on a camp fire, then there were the mussels cooked in a smoked gouda and bacon broth, a bite of local steak cooked by a friend, and some sausage in a lasagna.  I still feel picky about texture and cuts and looks and smells but it seems like this is a common sentiment even from regular, life-long carnivores.  I also get bored quickly, I have eat more than several bites before I’ve simply had enough.

Vegetarian and pescatarian dishes are still my staples and I don’t plan to go full-bore carnivore any time soon (or ever really) but I am glad that I’ve been able to get over my pickyness about food enough to expand my horizons and have a taste if the mood strikes me.

text