Fermented pickles are amazingly delicious. Yet, like all fermented foods, they are susceptible to spoilage during long term storage. This recipe involves a quick ferment for flavour, then the pickles are water bath processed in their brine for storage.
What about the probiotics?
Unfortunately canning fermented pickles in a hot water bath means that these pickles are no longer probiotic. That it what makes these delicious pickles shelf-stable. They will last in your cupboard for a year (or more) because there won’t be any bugs (good or bad) living in your pickle jar.
If you are interested in probiotic pickles, then try my recipe for probiotic pickles or Grandma’s fermented pickles.
Storage Pickles
Author: Emillie
Ingredients
- 2 lbs pickling cucumbers
- 1 liter (4 cups) of water
- 2 tbsp white vinegar
- ¼ cup of non-iodized salt
- 2 dill flowers or sprigs of dill weed
- 4 cloves of garlic
- 2 tsp pickling spices (optional)
Instructions
- Wash the cucumbers and trim off the blossom ends. Cut up the larger cucumbers as required.
- Pack cucumbers into a sterile container for fermenting. (See notes for more details.)
- Divide the spices between your containers. For example in a large mason jar I would add in 1-2 cloves of garlic, 1 sprig of dill and 1 tsp of spices.
- Combine water, vinegar and salt to make a brine.
- Pour the brine over the cucumbers.
- Allow to ferment somewhere cool and dark for 2-3 weeks. Check every 2-3 days, and skim off the foam/scum and top up the brine as needed. The pickles are finished when they have changed from bright green to a dull green and have a delicious fermented flavour.
- Remove the pickles from the brine. Then strain the brine into a small pot, discarding the dill, spices and garlic.
- Pack the pickles into hot canning jars, leaving ½ inch headspace.
- Bring the brine to a boil and pour over the pickles, leaving ½ inch headspace.
- Using snap lids, process the jars in a boiling water canner (10 minutes for 500 ml jars and 15 minutes for quart jars).
Notes:
-Pickles will become soft and mushy overtime. While removing the blossom end helps, you can also add Pickle Crisp
, or source of tannin like: a grape leaf, 1 tbsp of grated horseradish root, or a pinch of black tea.-If this is your first time fermenting, you should probably read up on the basics.
-Using a fermenting crock is traditional for fermenting pickles; however, you can skip skimming the scum if you use a fido jar, an airlock or a pickle-nipple lid.
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