Pickles, success!

I sampled the first of the fermented pickles yesterday. It was a little crunchy, a little spicy, and hasn't made me sick yet. They have been in the jar for 17 days. The recipe advised 3-5 weeks. Give that, I should expect them to take on more flavor in the coming weeks? I'll find out. so far, so good.

Pickles - now & then

It has been 14 days since the jar on the right looked like the jar on the left. The fresh green color faded by week two. Both of these are fermenting in our kitchen. The brine in the right jar is made from water, salt and vinegar. The brine for today's batch doesn't have vinegar. Its brine is two tablespoons of salt per quart of water. The key for fermentation, be it pickles or beer is to prevent bacterial growth. With beer, you boil the wort long enough to kill everything and then use and airlock to keep any airborne bugs from getting in. With  pickles, the key is to keep the cucumbers below the brine's level. I've never done this before, but I suspect I'll survive. I'll given them a try sometime next week. The recipe called out 3-5 weeks.

Fermenting dills. Started 9/17 & 9/3

Pickles, leather, pickles

Today was a good day for preserving.  We put away four pounds of pickles and a bit of squash. We don't eat a lot of pickles, so four pounds is pretty good for us. I put two pounds into a jar to ferment and canned the other two. Shari made some bread & butter pickles the other week. Basically, we are playing the pickle field for now. I'm glad to say that I still like squash-leather. It is going to let me free up some much needed space in the freezer. That space is probably going to go to beans and to a fall crop of broccoli that is coming on much earlier than I anticipated. 

Fermenting pickles

2 Cups of Squash comes to this