I have a hand-me-down canning cookbook from 1950s. It is well used, and tape now holds most the pages together, but it still has some inspiring recipes! My favourite recipe is for storing fermented pickles. All you have to do is pack the cucumbers into canning jarwith the brine, screw on the lid and then leave them sitting on a shelf until you are ready to eat them.
An offbeat fermented pickles recipe
This recipe is very different from the usual fermented pickles recipes. All you have to do is pack the pickles then store them. There’s no canning, preserving, or scum removal. And it makes the most delicious traditional-style pickles. It really is an amazing recipe.
(Side note: when I lived in Ireland we simply preserved jam by laying a piece of wax paper over the finished jam and screwing on a lid. I had about a 20% failure rate, which wasn’t bad considering there wasn’t any preservation involved.)
PrintGrandma’s Fermented Pickles
This is a traditional recipe that makes storing fermented pickles really easy. Just pack them in a jar and leave them to ferment in a dark, cool location for up to 6 months! Skip the work of canning and enjoy probiotic pickles all winter long.
- Prep Time: 10 minutes
- Total Time: 10 minutes
- Yield: 2-3 quart jars 1x
- Category: Pickles
- Method: Fermented
- Cuisine: Polish
Ingredients
Icing
- 1 lbs pickling cucumbers
- 1/3 cup pickling salt
- 4 cups water (chlorine free)
Pickling Brine
- 2 cups of chlorine free water
- 1/4 cup vinegar (5% acidity)
- 2 tbsp pickling salt
Packing in the Jar
- 1 tsp grated horseradish (see notes for alternatives)
- 1 sprig of dill
- 1 tsp mustard seed
Instructions
- Trim the blossom ends off the cucumbers.
- Mix the icing solution using cold water, and let the cucumbers soak in the icing solution over night. Keep the cucumbers submerged in the icing solution by weighing them down with bags of ice. This also helps to keep the cucumbers cold.
- Once you’ve set up the cucumbers for icing, mix the pickling brine ingredients (vinegar, salt and water), bring to a boil and simmer for 10 minutes.
- Pour the hot brine into a sterilized 1 quart mason jar and allow to cool over night.
- The next morning drain the cucumbers and pack them into the brine filled mason jar, along with the dill, horseradish and mustard. Leave at least 1 inch of headroom.
- Put a lid on the jar that will allow gas to escape while keeping out mold and other contaminates. (See notes for several suggestions.)
- Store the jar in a cool dark location.
- The pickles will bubble and ferment for 4-5 days, but leave them undisturbed until you are ready to eat them.
Notes
- I recommend leaving the pickles for at least a month to develop their flavour. I usually make about 10 quarts of these pickles to last us through the winter.
- Always be extra cautious with any long term ferment. Sanitize your jar. Don’t eat anything that looks or smells bad. And don’t add garlic because garlic is a botulism risk.
- The traditional recipe call for standard mason jar
with metal lid and jar ring. With the lid screwed on finger tight, the gasses will still be able to escape. I usually do a few jars this way for eating right away. I use a fido jar for pickles that are going to ferment for longer than a month. You could also use a mason jar with an airlock or a pickle-nipple
lid (affiliate links.)
- If you don’t have horseradish you could use a pinch of black tea. It just helps prevent the pickles from getting too soft.
lid (affiliate links.)Keywords: vintage, traditional, 1950's, preservation, summer, fall, winter, probiotic, healthy, storage
Hi Emillie, I’m curious about your statement to not use garlic. My recipes for fermenting Brussels sprouts, and most of my other ferment recipes call for cloves of garlic. How did you come to this conclusion?
A few reasons: I took this recipe from a 1950’s cookbook, and it called for me to skip the garlic. Also, garlic is low acid and a risk for botulism. I don’t think that’s an issue for sauerkraut, carrots, etc. However, I leave these pickles, unprocessed, in my closet for months… usually around 9 months until we finish them, so the risk of botulism is greater. Saying that I am currently fermenting garlic in honey and plan to leave it for a few months as well.
It’s all about weighing the risks. And as a blogger, I really don’t want to be responsible for a case of accidental poisoning. 🙂
Thanks. I too have wondered about fermenting garlic and peppers. When we lived in Oregon people were always dying from preserved peppers, though the reports never said how they were preserved. I would think safety would be connected to the salt/water ratio just as it is for any pickles. We always hear to be careful of old pickle recipes because they did not call for as much salt as newer ones do. As I read different recipes for ferments, I have noticed a fairly wide range of salt requirements which always makes me wonder why.
I just wrote a long reply and it disappeared!
Sorry. I have to manually approve comments. 🙂
Understandable!
Just put up 2 jars following this recipe. Looking forward to seeing how it goes (I gave it 5 stars already, just for the idea!). I normally ferment pickles just with the salt brine, not vinegar, but the family prefers the taste of the store-bought ones with vinegar, so maybe this will be the perfect compromise? Just wondering, the vinegar doesn’t kill off the probiotic properties of the ferment? And the fermentation happens just overnight with the “icing” of the cucumbers? Or is there fermentation happening in the salt-vinegar-water solution as well?
Also, just to check – I’m assuming the tsp of mustard is mustard powder, rather than prepared mustard?
★★★★★
I really love this recipe. The icing isn’t the fermentation, it’s to keep the pickles crispy. They seem to ferment just fine with the vinegar. There is very little in the recipe, but it does add flavour and changes the pH of the brine which might help with preventing the wrong sorts of bacteria from colonizing. And I meant mustard seed, but powder will work. (just fixed the recipe.) Hope your family likes them!
Thanks for the reply! Shoot, I have mustard seed and that’s what I normally put in pickles, but for some reason this time it didn’t occur to me. I think my family will like the flavour of the vinegar, so I’ll be very excited if it does still ferment. Will keep you posted.