Fermented Pickles (Half-Sours)

Somewhere along the line, some brilliant hunter-gathered figured out that if he took the seeds from a wild vegetable and stuck them in the ground, they would produce more of that plant.  He hurried to tell his tribe of the discovery, who rejoiced in the bounty.  And one night about a week after his first harvest, he came home from chasing gazelles all day to find a bunch of rotten vegetables sitting around.  That night, he was beaten with reeds by the village chieftain, because the tribe would go hungry.  So the next, smarter person came along and thought, "we need a way to keep all of these things longer", and hurriedly set about the task of preserving food.  And so, because he did not know the location of the nearest supermarket and his internet was out, he learned through experiment that if the vegetables were packed in a salt water brine, they would soon become pickled, lasting through until the next season in a bacteria-thwarting environment.  This man was revered by all, and lived a happy life until being eaten by a bear at the ripe old age of 28.  This was a long time ago, after all.

That's probably not the exact history of pickling - it was apparently worked out in India about 4,000 years ago with cucumbers.  Since then, many different cultures figured this out this trick, bringing us the Korean kimchi, Japanese tsukemono, German sauerkraut, Eastern European beets, Italian giardiniera, and American pickled okra and watermelon, to name just a small handful of what's out there.  Not to mention Scandinavian pickled herring, American pickled pig's feet, and a slew of other pickled protein parts that the world has come to love, or at least tolerate.

Pickling magic is actually quite simple, and you can play it one of two ways:

1. A 'chemical' pickling can be accomplished with an acid, by soaking the vegetables in a mixture of vinegar and spices, then putting them in sterilized jars with some form of preservative if a longer shelf life is desired.  This preservative used to be alum, but since it probably gives you brain damage, commercial shops tend to use sodium benzoate.  This process can be accomplished in a matter of hours, as with quick-pickled American watermelon or Sichuan bamboo shoots.
2. A 'natural' pickling is accomplished by leaving the vegetables in a brine of salt water and spices, where natural yeasts and bacteria ferment the pickles over a longer period.  This process can take days, weeks, or even months, depending on the desired result.  This would include kimchi, sauerkraut (buried in the yard for months), most refrigerated cucumber pickles, and of course the Chinese Thousand Year Eggs, which is a bit of a special case.

I have tried quick pickling with vinegar before, but it just didn't do it for me.  It's the difference between the non-refrigerated pickles that are yellow-ish green inside, and the refrigerated ones that are still a pale white green inside.  This, to me, not only looks more like food, but I find that it also tastes more 'pickley' - crisp, tangy, salty, not sweet, and not sharp unless it's your own choosing.  So here I present to you my first experiment in naturally pickled cucumbers, fermented in brine rather than steeped in vinegar.

Naturally Fermented Half-Sour Pickles
Modified from multiple sources

• 2 lbs Kirby cucumber, unwaxed
• 8 cloves of garlic, peeled
• 1 tbsp black peppercorns
• 1/4 cup (4 tbsp) non-iodized salt, ideally pickling salt
• 6 cups of water

For equipment, you will also need:

• 1 adequately large, non-reactive, food safe container, with a lid
• 1 plate or bowl which is slightly smaller than the size of the container
• Small finger / prep bowl

Let's start with the ingredients.  Why Kirby cucumbers?  Because they are perfect for pickling - right size, right moisture content, VERY crunchy.  There's a reason they're also known as 'pickling cucumbers'.  Next, the salt.  I would go with pickling salt, which is much more fine than table salt.  It also contains no iodine, which supposedly avoids the white haze my liquid had (although this doesn't affect the product).  If you can't find pickling salt, go with non-iodized table salt.  I omit dill because I wanted to try the dill-free version, and I'm upping the garlic I actually used by 100% because I thought it needed more, and will plan to add more in the next round.

Scrub your cucumbers to remove any residues, and trim off the blossom end if it's still on there (it will rot).  In a large saucepan, warm the water and dissolve in the salt, allowing to come completely back to room temperature before using.  Once done, add the garlic and peppercorns, and pack in the cucumbers densely.  Weight these down by placing the small bowl / plate / whatever over the tops, then put the prep bowl on top of that, and fill with water.  This needs to keep all cucumbers fully submerged, so make sure you get things right.

The submerged pickles, trapped by a small prep bowl.  I later added a plasticware lid to keep the pickles better submerged

Put the container in a warm-ish place (I'll make up a number and say 60-75 F), and let them sit, undisturbed, for 3 days.  After this time, you may see some foam starting to collect on the top of the container.  If so, skim it off.  If not, do not despair - I didn't see any, and I lived to tell the tale.  Regardless, let your cucumbers rest in the brine for 7-14 days, checking on them periodically.  You can open up the container and have a look if you like.  Make sure to skim any 'white foam' off the surface of the liquid, which is a perfectly normal occurrence that looks suspiciously like mold, which is probably natural bacteria eating away happily at the cucumber.

Oh man, you're going to eat that?  Are you crazy?!  It's fine - this is just a sign of the bacterial / fungal activity going on in the brine, and is a sign of a healthy fermentation.  So long as the pickles are under the level of the water and not rotting above the surface, you're good.  Just skim this off every few days.  FYI, mine are floating only because I had just moved the bowl

When done, place the container in the fridge for 3 days to stop the fermentation process, and then keep in there for a few weeks while you eat them.  Ah, but how do you know when they are done?  Well, follow your nose.  If the cucumbers smell like pickles and you've had to remove some foam, you're probably done. If it smells like nothing, give it some more time.  This isn't a science, and nobody's going to give you a score.  You eat them when you're damned good and ready to.

I call my pickles 'half sours' because I put in less salt than other recipes, although more than some I saw online.  If you want to go crazy, add more salt, but do so at your own risk - they're going to be mighty sour.  You could also add a full bunch of dill to the pickles to make the more common dill half-sours, and you could also add something spicy to kick up the punch a bit.  I didn't think mine needed any tweaking, but will keep experimenting and will post the results in updates.

Update 8/5/13: made these again with pickling salt - 7 c. tap water, 4 tbsp pickling salt.  Way too salty, and then they turned mushy.  Need to experiment further.