Update

Well, I started pickling a bunch of stuff all around the same time so stuff is piling up. My kosher dills are ready and tested. Apparently I've never had a kosher dill before and was quite surprised at how they taste...a lot different from vinegared pickles....and ferment-y. The beets and bread & butters should be ready within the next few days. Preserved lemons are also ready, but I need to find recipes to use those in and that's not happening right now with finals around the corner. Also, my beer is now ready to drink! Perfect for finals ending soon! Looking to start my next brew, I picked up "Brewing Classic Styles: 80 Winning Recipes Anyone Can Brew". It's supposedly full of all homebrew award winning recipes. I think I might take a class from the local homebrew shop and, maybe, join the local homebrew club so I can actually talk to someone about this. I'm a visual learner and there is only so much I can read.

I'll let you know how everything else turns out!

Kosher Dill Pickles

Been awhile since I posted, but that might have something to do with the slow build up of pickles within my fridge. I chose to do these because they were quick and required no vinegar and only a brine of water and salt. There are two ways of doing these pickles: in spears and whole. I did both just to experiment, but the spears should develop their flavor and be ready quicker. All you do is leave them out for a couple of days allows for a bit for fermentation to occur.

-Brine: a ratio of 4 quarts of water to 6 tablespoons Kosher salt

-Kirby or pickling cucumbers

-Fresh dill

-Whole garlic cloves crushed, still in their skin

-Pickling spice

Basically you just heat 1 quart of water with the salt to dissolve it and then combine it with the rest of the 3 quarts. Pass your jars through a dishwasher or some boiling water before packing them. I did cut up spears in one jar and whole in the other (though I did score the bottoms of the cucumbers). I think these jars were around 1 quart and I added about 2 branch thingies of dill (descriptive, right?) to each along with 2 cloves of garlic and 2 teaspoons of pickling spice. Pour the brine over and loosely seal if using lids or cover with cheese cloth (I used a paper towel) and let sit out for 2 days for spears and 3-4 for whole cucumbers. Refrigerate when they are ready!

Pickled Beets

After failing my first attempt at pickling and canning beets I decided to tackle them, again, and headed out to the farmer's market. After picking up the beets I decided on a simple recipe to begin with (a pickled beet recipe with red wine next!) involving the following:

-Beets

-Cinnamon sticks

-Allspice berries

-Whole cloves

-Regular and brown sugar

-Salt

-Cider vinegar

-Water

I begun by cooking the beets for various amounts of time since I had some oddly shaped ones in this batch. Afterwards, they were cooled in water, peeled, and sliced into 1/4" slices. After sterilizing the 3 one pint mason jars in a boiling water bath I brought the spices, water, sugar, salt, and vinegar to a boil and simmered for ten minutes. Oh man, can simmering vinegar burn your eyes. Not good for a small space...like my kitchen...or entire apartment for that matter. Meanwhile (with burning eyes), I packed the beets into the jars and poured the spiced vinegar mixture over the beets through a strainer.

Now, this time I was very careful to tighten the two-piece caps more this time so I wouldn't get any leakage during the 30 minute boiling water bath process. I'm still paranoid it leaked because some red water drip off two of the cans, but this was most likely residual since the entire bath was not beet red like last time. They now have to age for 3 weeks. Bah, I want to try them now!

Pink Pickled Cauliflower and Cabbage

Wanting a pickle that was ready faster than 3-4 weeks I decided upon this recipe for Pink Pickled Cauliflower and Cabbage. It gets the name "pink" from the red cabbage that is included in the recipe, which turns the pickling liquid a pleasant, light pink hue. The advantage of this recipe is that it requires only 10 days to mature and no canning is involved! I found some nice (and cheap) cauliflower at the Pasadena Farmers' Market this Saturday (though no Kirby cucumbers!!!) so I decided upon this recipe adapted from "The Joy of Pickling".

Recipe:

-1/2 cauliflower head divided into small pieces

-1/4 small red cabbage head sliced into long pieces (or whatever shape you choose)

-2 dried chile de arbol sliced in half

-1 teaspoon fennel seeds (or caraway...I used fennel)

-1 bay leaf

Pickling liquid:

-2 1/4 cups white wine vinegar

-2 1/4 cups water

-2 tablespoons pickling salt (I used 3 tablespoons kosher salt)

This liquid makes enough for 2 quarts, while the recipe only is for 2 pints so beware you'll have left over pickling liquid (I used a 2 pint jar for this particular recipe)!

Sterilize a 2 pint jar either by immersing it in a boiling water bath (lifted off the bottom by a canning or steaming rack) for 10 minutes or you can put it in an over for 10 minutes at 200 degrees. After the jar (or jars) have been sterilized, pack the vegetables and spices equally into the jar.

Combine the pickling liquid ingredients and stir until all salt is dissolved (may require heating if using kosher salt...I just put my measuring jar into the microwave for 15 seconds). Pour over the vegetables in the jar and cap. Let stand for 10 days at room temperature in a cool, dark place. Pickles will be ready after the 10 days so make sure to refrigerate even if you don't eat them right away. They should keep 4-6 weeks.

I don't quite have the knack of scaling down the pickling liquid yet from recipes, which is why I always end up with left overs so if you follow this recipe you will, too. But, you can always use the leftovers to make more of this recipe since the only thing that really matters is the proportions of vinegar, water, and salt. Otherwise, you should feel free to play around with spices and vegetables. You may also make refrigerator pickles by just combining the liquid with vegetables and experimenting with varied amounts of time (such as 1 day, 3 days, and 1 week).

Failure

As mentioned in the B&B post, I was recently at the Pasadena farmer's market. In addition to those Kirby cucumbers I picked up I also got some beets to pickle. I picked a recipe with clove and allspice as the main spices along with brown sugar and regular sugar dissolved in cider vinegar and water. Everything was going well and after 30 minutes in a boiling water bath I pulled the 2 pint jars I made. However, I noticed that the water was tinted red. This was not good. It meant that either that jars cracked or the lids were not on tight enough and leaked. Either way I couldn't use these since the vinegar could have gotten out or been diluted. BUT, now I know how tight I have to make the lids before processing. I'll try the beets again soon!

Bread & Butter Pickles Four Ways

It's about time that this blog had some bona fide pickles on it and here they are: bread & butter pickles. We went to the Pasadena farmer's market on Saturday since it was a beautiful day out. Since I hadn't seen an pickling cucumbers at the grocery store recently I decided to have a look at the market this Saturday. One of the stalls had a great selection of produce including some strawberries that were subsequently made into jam. They also had Kirby cucumbers and I picked up 3 lbs. Side note: do not bring your stroller with your child that is clearly to old for it to the marker...you block the entire pathway. Anyway, I pulled the base for this recipe from the "Joy of Pickling" and then added a few twists of my own. I decided that I'd make four different types of bread & butter pickles: regular, red pepper flake spiced, chile de arbol (left whole), and sriracha (or, rooster sauce).

Basic ingredients:

-Kirby cucumbers

-Mustard seeds

-Celery seeds

-Tumeric

-Either: red pepper flakes, chile de arbol (whole), or sriracha

-Sugar

-Salt

-Cider vinegar

I began by slicing the cucumbers into relatively chunky slices, tossed them with salt, and let them sit for ~4 hours with ice on top.

While the canner heated up, I brought the vinegar, water, sugar, and tumeric to a boil and poured it over the cucumbers packed into pint size mason jars. These were then processed for 30 minutes at 180-185 degrees, which is a low temperature pasteurization method (point of that is too keep the cucumber slices crisp, which is harder to do when they are processed at a boil). The cans sealed correctly since the tops no longer pop back up when pushed down These will sit for a month before eating so that they develop the correct flavoring.

Rich Red Ale Part IV: Bottled

Well, the beer was finally done fermenting in the primary and secondary fermenters so it was time to bottle it. Before bottling I mixed in priming sugar, which is simply to give the surviving yeast a boost to carbonate the beer once it is sealed in bottle. It still looks and smells like beer so let's hope it turns out well in the 4 weeks remaining!

Also, picked up some Kirby cucumbers and beets at the Pasadena farmer's market today so look for future posts on Bread and Butter pickles and pickled beets!