Got Cucumbers? Make Pickles

As in most things I make, I get a hankering and jump directly into the deep end of the pool.  No experiments that get discarded into the trash.  I commit and I commit HARD.  So this morning,  coffee still firmly in hand, I ventured into my backyard to see just how hot it was going to get.  Earlier this year, a friend of mine and I dug up 4 of the 7 rosemary bushes that inhabited the deep and narrow raised brick planters that run the perimeter of my patio.    These rosemarys were likely planted a good 20+ years ago, and with a long iron pole borrowed from my trusted neighbor Steve, we pried the ancient  roots from the deep planters they called home and very excitedly freed up a good 12' of  planting space.  After amending the soil with organic compost, and no particular plan for what would replace the rosemary, I said yes every time one of my farmer friends offered me a seedling.  The first ones in the ground were cucumbers that immediately took off in the deep, drip irrigated planters.  Before long, tiny little cucs began appearing, and today when I ventured forth, still a bit hazy from last night's margaritas combined with allergies galore,  I admired the largest cucumber hanging from the vine, determining it must be time to harvest.  After doing a little online search "how do I know when my cucumbers are ready?" I determined, yes, today's the day!.  Okay this all seems fairly standard.  I cut my first beauty into slices and salted the slices for a quick japanese style pickle with rice vinegar, sesame oil and some dried wakame seaweed.

You may be wondering why I'm going so deeply into this without sharing my Japanese vinegared cucumber recipe right this second.  Well here's why, when I ventured back out to take a photo for my friend who had shared with me the starts, I pushed back the foliage to discover many, many more ripe and ready cucumbers.  As in practically all things in my life that I get inspired to do, I decided - I'm making pickles!  Like real, dill pickles that take days to cure.  But first, a key bit of information, I had never done this before, so time for a little online research.

There are a few things to get straight when making pickles, for one, clean mason jars.  Those I have.  I also needed pickling spices which I happened to possess the raw ingredients for:  whole coriander, black peppercorn, whole allspice, red chili flakes, a few other things... I got the recipe for pickling spices from the website Spruce Eats and decided to go with it.  Apple cider vinegar, check!  The one thing I actually had to get was dill.  Damnit I was really trying not to go to the store!

I toasted all the spices and headed off to buy some dill...  I love Clausen dill pickles and this recipe Homemade Clausen Knock Off Pickles was the one I chose to loosely base my pickle pilgramage on.  I also discovered these folks like to "meander" in their writing as much as me! This recipe is not for a traditional cooked pickling liquid, but a room temperature method that they claim keeps the raw cucumbers totally crunchy.  We shall see!

Anyway, since this was my first foray into the dill pickle arena, I decided to just make a couple of quart jars worth, so loosely halved their recipe.  When I returned from the store, I was talking to my chef friend about an unrelated matter, and casually mentioned "I'm about to try my hand at dill pickles!" His response was exactly the same as my other chef friend's response from an hour or two earlier, "do you have Kirby cucumbers?"  I'm like, "guess what people, I don't follow rules!" In reality, I have no idea what kind of cucumbers I have,  except that they are kind of bumpy and have some spines that I thought would disappear after ripening but they have not.  If you've followed my blog at all, you will notice that I don't get overly particular about species and following recipes to a "T." I generally look up a few ways of making the particular dish, sauce or otherwise, get the overarching view of it and relative proportions, then get to work.

It's a super basic recipe, but I decided to make the spice and vinegar part a bit more concentrated.  I doubled the amount of pickling spices  (2 T each into my quart jars) and also doubled the proportion of vinegar in the water/salt mixture as it just didn't seem vinegar-ey enough (I used Bragg's Apple Cider Vinegar with the "mother") .  Keep in mind, this may bite me in the ass later, but I'm winging it!  I only crammed 4 cucumber quarters into each jar, as i needed to bend them in, they were a bit long!  The recipe called for dried dill seeds and I hadn't read it that carefully, so bought fresh dill.  I stuffed it in there anyway, as there was no way I was going back to the store!

  

Finally, I poured the briny vinegar over the whole shebang, and lightly covered them with their lids (per the recipe - I assume this is so they don't explode when you open them later) and placed them in the pantry for safekeeping until their unveiling in a few days.  I had a few more cups of pickling liquid, so sliced up the remaining cucumber into "chips" and stuffed them into half pint jars and stored them along side for the pickling effect to take place!

4 DAYS LATER...

The original recipe had mentioned  if I noticed a foamy film developing on top of my pickles, to go ahead and skim it off.  Well, while doing a "check" 2 days in, my small jars with the slices had nice spawning mould completely overtaking their tops!  And the large traditional mason jar I
used, also had a little mould occurring.  Blerg!  I scraped off the mould and tasted the pickles underneath. The sliced ones tasted okay but were very soft (i.e. beginning to decompose!)  The large spears were so-so, nicely "pickled" tasting, but had a definite buzz on the tongue, i.e. beginning to ferment.  This is not what you want when making dill pickles.  It won't make you sick or anything, but not something you want to be explaining over and over to your friends when they get a funny look on their faces when digging into your homemade wares.

mason jar with "film" on top (around 10:30-11:00)
This was the second round of film, I scraped off the first
at 2 days...

storage jar batch with nice clean top, no filmy residue!

storage jar, nice and crisp looking (top); obvious decomposition
and softness visually apparent on bottom pickle - this was from the mason
jar, no bueno!

The final jar I tried, the pickles turned out perfectly.  Not fermented, not soft, nice and crunchy and exactly as planned.  This jar, happened to be a glass storage jar  I had in the cabinet from which I had previously discarded the corroded metal clamp, but had retained the rubber ring that when clamped down forms a hermetic seal, but when not clamped, just rests perfectly on top.  The glass top was weighty enough to not let in any air or mould, and the pickles are nice and crispy.  And by the way, who needs dill seed when you have fresh dill.  Now, I'm not doing a side by side comparison with store bought Clausen's, but I would make these again, definitely retaining my doubling of ingredients and may even add a little sugar to the next for a sweet and sour tang! 

success!  these are going into the fridge!

NOTES:  Oh and by the way, deep end of the pool or not, I threw out the rest (I know, I know!), as I have plenty of other things to make that need room in the fridge!   Next time I will cut my large cucumbers in half so that more pieces fit in the jar and nothing sticks up (my cukes were LONG).  I will continue to double the concentration of the recipe ingredients.  Also, I will decommission more hermetically sealed jars whose metal claps are oxidizing away in the cabinet as I write this.   And, I will use fresh dill again, it worked perfectly!