Pickles are some of the most wildly accepted fermented vegetables… if we can manage to make them crunchy and not mushy.
Reading: how to make bubbies lacto fermented pickles
Any disappointed pickle-maker will relate to this story:
I remember my first batch of pickles that were deliciously crunchy and tasted just like ‘store pickles’- crunchy and pleasingly sour with a little bit of kick from the fermentation. Thankfully I made a gallon at that time, and we enjoyed them all summer.
Read more: Best Easy Sweet & Spicy Dill Pickles | Family Cuisine
Unable to re-create those pickles again, I switched to store-bought Bubbie’s pickles for years. On a whim last summer, and having received a basket of garden-fresh cucumbers from a neighbor, I tried making pickles again, adding a little bit of the Bubbie’s pickle juice as a starter culture.
They worked! Delicious! Crunchy! Fermented homemade, and essentially free pickles! This sure beat the $6/jar that I was spending on store pickles, good as they were.
I tried off and on all year, and confirmed that when I added a bit of ‘juice’ from a previous batch of successful pickles, the pickles were crunchy and great. When I just did my normal salt water fermentation, they were a little mushy and okay as relish, but not the crunchy pickle that we loved.
Why does this work?
Read more: How to Make Pickles: Step-by-Step Pickling Guide
When we culture foods, we cultivate different bacteria and yeast that are present in the air. That’s why San Francisco Sourdough is world-famous- the particular natural yeasts in the air there make absolutely amazing sourdough. Montana Sourdough just doesn’t compare. It’s also why we can’t just add a probiotic capsule to milk and expect it to turn into yogurt, and why dairy kefir has so many more beneficial organisims than yogurt, yet it remains liquid when cultured, yet yogurt solidifies.
The culture in Bubbie’s pickles, which contains live cultures still (you can’t do this trick with ‘dead’ pasteurized pickles- it has to be live ferments) has properties that retains the properties of cucumbers that we love, and the probiotics that we need.
Continued reading:
- Fill your fridge quickly and easily with a Ferment Afternoon
- How do you know you’re culturing the good bacteria and not the bad?
- Why You Need to Start Slow with Ferments (why ferments might make you sick)
Read more: how to make sechler’s pickles copy copycat recipe | Family Cuisine
