Pickles

Harvey Greenberg Asks...
             John Bannon Answers
             (Of course, Harvey is asking about PICKLING cucumbers)
Pickles
             Jan Garvin: On Pickles and Pickling
             Pawel Golik Has a (Real) Polish Recipe
             Lois Adds...
             Rosemary Davis Adds a Hint From Her Mother
Astrid Bear Has a Question
             Jan Garvin
             Pawel Golik
             Jan Garvin's Granny Difference
             Lois' Granny Difference
             Rosemary Davis' Granny Difference
Astrid Asks About the Gray Scum
             Pawel and the Gray Scum

Harvey Greenberg Asks...
Anyone out there have a decent and simple recipe for picking cucumbers? I bought a jar of 'green' pickles, ate them, and have been using the juice. Works, but sooner or later will run out of juice. The simpler the better.

John Bannon Answers
I just go out there, with gardening gloves on and snap them off like Bob's yer uncle!

Pickles
Jan Garvin: On Pickles and Pickling
There are about as many types of pickle as there are vegetables, so to give you a decent chance of getting what you want, we need to start with whether you want sweet or sour, and then what type. Green sweet pickles are made very differently from green dill pickles, although the juice from either can be used to produce a decent secondary pickle.
Some pickles are produced by soaking in a vinegar solution, with the flavorings of the maker's choice, often including sugar and spices. The little green pickles known as Gherkins in the US (I believe the term means something else in Europe) are candied. The recipe calls for soaking them several days running in an increasingly concentrated sugar and vinegar solution. Deli style, or Kosher, dills, are brined rather than done with a vinegar solution. In my opinion, they are the tastiest, but of course, they can deliver quite a dose of salt, so eat them with at least a bit of caution.
Almost any kind of firm fruit or vegetable can be pickled. I love pickles made from okra, mushrooms, peppers, onions, elephant garlic, watermelon rind, European cabbage (sauerkraut), Asian cabbage (kimchee) crab apples, peaches and pears, just for starters. I had a friend who was 60 when I was 20 who used to make a turnip sauerkraut which was probably the least appetizing pickle I can think of. I also didn't care for her Christmas pudding based on turnips. Maybe I just don't care much for turnips.

Pawel Golik Has a (Real) Polish Recipe
When done properly they do not have a very salty taste and they are excellent on hot days. Here's a classical Polish recipe.
2 kg cucumbers - use the shorter kind with "goosebumps" on their skin, the long smooth ones aren't that good for pickling
Garlic - use one (or half) bulb (head) per 2 kg cucumbers
Fresh dill (a few stalks)
Salt (~1.5 tablespoons per liter of boiled lukewarm water)
It is very important to have a proper pot or jar for pickling, the best ones are earthenware with a proper heavy lid. (See corner image.)
Wash the cucumbers carefully, put them in the pot or jar, add garlic and dill, add lukewarm boiled (!) water with salt, so that the cucumbers can float (but just, don't add too much), cover and leave in a warm (but not too hot) place.
An airconditioned kitchen won't work, use your basement or garage. If using a transparent glass jar keep in the dark.
After about three days you get what we call "half-sour" or "half-salty" pickled cucumbers, my favourite summer food. Keep longer for more sour taste, till you get the taste you like.
You can experiment with other herbs and spices. Some suggestions: a fresh horseradish root, white mustard seeds, fresh tarragon, bay leaves, allspice (whole) etc. In some traditional recipes oak leaves are added to the brine.
This recipe is more for preparing a small batch to be eaten quickly, if you want to make something that can last longer there are similar recipes using twist-off jars and pasteurisation.
Also, as with all recipes involving fermentation - sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. Some things that can influence the outcome are:
- the cucumbers. They need to be young, firm and freshly picked. The right kind (the short "goosebumps" one) should be pale green, if they are too dark-green it means the farmer used too much fertilizer - no good. Use "organic" if you can - chemicals used in industrialized farming may interfere with fermentation. Avoid puncturing the skin on the cucumbers when you prepare them.
- the water. In large cities water companies use chemicals (eg. chorine or fluoride) to kill bacteria in the water. Use spring (eg. oligocene) water in such case.

Lois Adds...
Lots of recipes begin with covering the cukes with salt and letting them sit for a while, to leach out liquid, shrivel the cukes a bit. Then, when you cover them with the brine (in the US, that's often a mixture of vinegar, water, sugar and spices), it seeps back into the cukes and replaces the leached lost liquid.
If you're not worried about canning or preserving your pickles, and just want to make a small batch, keep them in the fridge and finish them off, you could put the cukes in a bowl, cover them with coarse Kosher salt and let sit overnight. Next day, thoroughly wash off the salt, and then pour your liquid over them to cover. There are dozens of recipes for the liquid, most require a mixture of vinegar, water, sugar and spices, boiled and then cooled. Check the web for recipes for the pickling liquids, pick one, don't worry about precision.
Put the liquid-covered cukes in the fridge after adding some peeled garlic, sliced onion, and/or dill heads to the bowl, whatever you like. Let it all sit a day or two, and then start eating.
Take notes on how you did it, when you think they've reached glory, and adjust the next time for taste.

Rosemary Davis Adds a Hint From Her Mother
Pawel has the right of it - be sure to use kosher salt. My mother also added a pinch of alum to each jar which was supposed to keep the pickles crispier. Seemed to work.

Astrid Bear Has a Question
Having obtained some nice pickling cucumbers at the farmer's market, and gone to the public well for water, and with my boiled water, salted with kosher salt, now cooling, I have a question for Pawel: I have a crock very like the one you referenced, and it has a nice heavy lid that can be clamped down tightly. Once the water has become lukewarm and is poured over the lovely cucumbers, do I clamp the lid or just let the top rest on the crock?

Jan Garvin
I can't speak for Pawel, of course, but my grandmother's technique was to put a plate on the top of the cucumbers and weight it down with a clean rock, leaving space around the edges for gas to escape, but not enough for flies to get in. Her dill pickle recipe was a fermentation process, which is a live action process, like making beer or wine. I've managed to replicate it a few times, but not nearly as many times as I've ruined a batch of cucumbers by trying to. Too much salt, too little salt, too much heat, not sufficiently sterile environment, cleaning the crock with chlorine bleach and leaving behind enough to kill the lactobacillus culture. I think I have found every way there is to not make pickles out of my cucumbers. I need to try Pawel's method and see if it works better than Grandmother's.

Pawel Golik
It is a common trick to cover the crock, some people cover the crock with a clean washcloth before putting the lid on. It shouldn't be sealed, but it should stop bugs and dust from falling into the crock.
Don't clamp it shut, some people put a heavy rock on top of the lid, but with a proper crock this is usually not necessary, especially if you go for the shorter fermentation and the half-sour taste. Let me know how it went - this is not exact science and sometimes it fails for no apparent reason.
The recipe I posted also uses a fermentation process. And you're right - sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. And you never get the taste your grandmother used to get. I think it is related to our modern obsession with sterility. We use so many chemicals affecting microbial life around our households and in farming, that we change the natural composition of the microflora (we don't get rid of them, no, we just select the more resistant ones).
How was your grandmother's method different from the one I posted?

Jan Garvin's Granny Difference
Only in that she didn't heat the brine. She would put down a layer of cucumbers, then a layer of kosher salt, then another of the cukes, another of salt, etc. The salt would draw liquid out of the cucumbers and make the brine. That's the method I've used with sauerkraut, too, usually have better luck with sauerkraut than with dill pickles.
My mother says that she and her mother used to put up fifty gallons of assorted pickles per year, and the family would eat them all every year. I have one of the crocks in my own kitchen and use it for a flour bin.

Lois' Granny Difference
One granny difference is in the pre-pickling brining: you can cover the cukes with coarse salt alone. Not a salt and water solution, but just the salt, and leave that on overnight. The next morning you wash all the salt off, and then proceed with the rest of your method.
My uncle used to have a huge "truck" farm, and raise tomatoes, watermelon, cucumbers, cabbage. Then he pickled or "slawed" the all in huge barrels, put it in jars, and sold his "appetizers" to hotels and restaurants.
When a barrel went bad, he'd pass it on to us, to use as a doghouse.
Our dogs used to smell faintly of pickles until the wood lost the odor, but since they were outdoor dogs for the most part, didn't matter to anyone but the dogs, and they didn't seem to notice or care.

Rosemary Davis' Granny Difference
My mother had special dishtowels that were her "pickling towels," and woe betide you if you mistakenly used them for something else (like the dishes.)

Astrid Asks About the Gray Scum The crock of Pawel's Polish Pickles was left untended (I had been stirring it once or twice a day). Opening it this morning revealed bits of grey scum on the surface, but it still smelled good. I've rinsed off a pickle and crunched it down - mild and refreshing. I'm wondering if I should just remove them from the brine and refrigerate, make fresh brine and continue to let them sit at room temp until they are gone, or some combination of both ideas.

Pawel and the Gray Scum
Remove the scum, and refill with brine to keep the cucumbers covered. Wash the cover of the crock, you could also cover with a fresh washcloth. The scum you observe are yeasts that come from the air. You could also replace the brine. They will be good to eat for a couple of days if you leave them as they are now, you could refrigerate them, but they don't keep very long anyway. What you have now are the "half-sour" pickles, my favourite, esp. on hot days. If you want to continue fermentation for a longer time it would be good to move the crock to a cooler place (cellar temperature ~15 degrees centigrade), replace the brine and cover with a clean (boiled) washcloth under the lid. I have very little experience in preserving them for a long time - they never last long enough to worry.
Do stop the fermentation when you notice that they go soft and there are large empty cavities formed inside the cucumbers - that means they'll get worse with time.
Next time you may add a bit more salt, and do add fresh dill (wash the stalks carefully) - the seeds or dried herb won't give you the same taste.