The humble PICKLE

let's talk pickles.

What do you do with the leftover pickle juice? (Store bought stuff). I use mine for a quick marinate for tomatoes before I put them in a sandwich. Even roasted eggplant in a sandwich gets a soak.

And homemade stuff? Im a total rookie. But I got a Korean inspired jalapeño down pat. Instead of salt. Use soy sauce. Same vinegar and sugar.

What do you have going? I'm doing some zucchini pickles now. The color is all wrong. Wish they were more yellow.

Pickle juice as Tequila chaser instead of salt and lime

Use Zuni cafe's zucchini pickle recipes, very yellow, very tasty. I put pickle brine in my mouth post whisky shots. In a Bloody Mary, salad dressing, on white fish.

I just did a big kimchi batch for the season: daikon, lotus root, garlic scapes, green onion, and bamboo shoot.

Kraut and a bunch of other lacto ferments to follow.

Shoot after rye whiskey.

Just ate the last of my homemade dills pickles.

As for the brine from store bought, last week I tried the ol' 24h pickle brined fried chicken for the first time. I hated it. Made my chicken taste like fried pickles. I much prefer going 24h in buttermilk.

Boom, I went kinda crazy with the pickles this year. My Lady at the North Carolina State farmers market let me hand pick 35 pounds of "that morning picked", pickling cucumbers. None larger than my middle finger.

My method:

Wash then cut the blossom end off but leave the stem end intact. Float the cumbers in ice water for 24hrs, scrub each cucumber with nylon brush, dry cucumbers very well.

Salt, clean water, fresh whole garlic, pickling spice, copious handfuls of fresh dill and a few fresh bay leaves. I also added (NOT REQUIRED):10g sodium erythrobate for color preservation and 50g Pickle Crisp

https://www.freshpreserving.com/ball-pickle-crisp-granules-5.5-oz.-1034061VM.html

Layer that up in a food grade five gallon bucket and let it sit at room temp for a week before sampling. Mine took 11 days to ferment to my liking. Then pack them 1/2 gallon jars and refrigerate.

This year I also made some Indian beet pickles and Persian Torshi with mostly cauliflower.

Boom, to make your zuccinin pickles yellow, use ground turmic.

This was my base recipe:

http://www.culturesforhealth.com/le...-recipes/lacto-fermented-kosher-dill-pickles/

Funny this comes up right now. DH and I are going to pickle some cucumbers this weekend. I envy peeps with good connections/farmers markets. I live in a bit of a desert in this respect and can't haul pounds of the stuff on the train from the downtown farmers' market.

thanks for some GREAT tips!!

"But I got a Korean inspired jalapeño down pat. Instead of salt. Use soy sauce. Same vinegar and sugar. "

If they are kimchi-style room temp stuff, how do you ensure there is enough salt for safety? Also, I'd be very picky about the choice of soy sauce - anything preserved with benzoates could mess with the fermentation in funny ways...

LifeByA1000Cuts said:

"But I got a Korean inspired jalapeño down pat. Instead of salt. Use soy sauce. Same vinegar and sugar. "

If they are kimchi-style room temp stuff, how do you ensure there is enough salt for safety? Also, I'd be very picky about the choice of soy sauce - anything preserved with benzoates could mess with the fermentation in funny ways...

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i keep it cold. it's a fridge pickle.

and soy sauce..i use a great one. i grew up on crappy soy sauce, and when i married my soy sauce snob of a wife..she opened my eyes. my MIL occasionally brings me bottles from Taiwan on her visits..her suitcases are effen heavy!!

favorite quick pickle is to just throw some lemon juice, salt and more sugar than you think, on watermelon radishes: it's sweet and sour, a little funky, bright pink.

next project is scallions in a lemon basil champagne vinegar.

Watermelon radish? Pray tell?

I hate the stuff. This is the worst food ever. Even if you take it out of the sandwich you cannot get rid of the taste.

krx927 said:

I hate the stuff. This is the worst food ever. Even if you take it out of the sandwich you cannot get rid of the taste.

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We could have been friends.

I find that the older I get, the more I tend to favor sour/savory over sweet. I actually crave pickles and sauerkraut now and didn't when I was younger. Drinking my iced tea with only lemon now also, no sugar.

The pickle recipe hubby and I made a few weeks back turned out amazing! We used a very high quality apple cider with mother as part of the brining solution and it was so far above anything else we've even had. Bread and butter style with a bit of sweet and sour, pickles with slivered red peppers and white onions.

We'll probably be canning more this weekend as we are easily going through a quart every two weeks or so. It was absolutely perfect on smoked pulled pork with the extra pickle juice sprinkled on the bun.

krx927 said:

I hate the stuff. This is the worst food ever. Even if you take it out of the sandwich you cannot get rid of the taste.

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Couldn't agree more. If there was one food that could have been prevented from ever becoming popular it'd be a pickle

Mucho Bocho said:

Watermelon radish? Pray tell?

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It's actually in the turnip family I believe. I've never gotten the "heat" from them that I do from regular radishes. The get very sweet when roasted.

http://www.myrecipes.com/recipe/roasted-watermelon-radishes

I like then for contrast when I roast a bunch of root veggies. Squash, Carrots, parsnips, etc. Makes a nice colorful bowl.

pretty sure i got that sweet and sour radish quick-pickle ride out of an old lucky peach mag... anywho: it's nice! the liquor from this is kinda weird tasting, in the way that radish juice is funny stuff.

for vinegar pickles on the fly i always use a variation of that 3-2-1 formula: 3 parts vin, 2 parts water, 1 part sugar... salt (aggressively) to taste.

i should have taken a picture, but i made a green tomato pickle to pair with a pastrami'd beef tongue, set on a chilled buttermilk and sorrel soup.

the pickle needed to be sweet and sour so i skimped on the water, used 1/2 champagne vin 1/2 rice wine vin, a lot of basil, dill, pinch of scallions (white part).

also:

here's a nice intro guideline for salt brined pickles

http://www.wildfermentation.com/making-sour-pickles-2/

pickle-haters;

nothing? no kimchee? that red onion thing that comes with a mexican street taco? nada?