Making pickles is as easy as taking them from the shop’s shelf. It only needs a jar, water, salt and some spices to let our dill pickles recipe shine!

It’s crazy that what we know about everyday life is just a bunch of badly learnt habits stitched together with the societies rusty needle. We prance around dressed in this knowledge like it would be impenetrable armor until the first Jedi comes in our way and lights up the way to the force.

Cucumbers aren’t vegetables but fruits.

As it contains the seed of the plant, it is technically categorized as fruit, the same way as pumpkins, zucchini and watermelon. Watermelon is not a surprise though being as sweet as juicy as every fruit but it’s always a surprise with sweetless things to belong to the fruit category.

Anyway, this isn’t the only strange thing about cucumber. Amazingly, the saying ‘As cool as a cucumber’ isn’t stuck around because of some celebrity pulled it out of thin air live on TV but because it is a scientific fact. Cucumbers inner temperature can be 20° cooler than the outside air making them, in fact, cool.

Unfortunately, this won’t cool us down during the height of scorching summer more than any other water filled thing would do, but it’s a great option for snacks any time of the day especially because cucumbers are 90% water with almost no carbs or calories.

We can snack on them raw with skin on and off during summertime and preserve the rest of the yield for the harsh winter as it was done for centuries. Scientists found proves of pickling as far as 2000 BC which doesn’t come as a surprise due to the profane easiness of the process.

Pickling is an anaerobic fermentation at room temperature caused by naturally occurring lactic acid bacteria on decomposing organic materials. This rather complicated sounding thing means nothing more that it happens on food when there is no air available which is the case when we pour brine or vinegar over them.

However, it may seem that pickling is harmless or even improves the nutritional qualities of food by introducing B vitamins produced by the fermenting bacteria, some studies are suggesting along with the warning of the WHO that the pickled vegetables could cause nasopharynx cancer due the carcinogen nitrosamines that are created during the fermentation process.

It probably doesn’t help much that most commercial pickles are stuffed with sugar and all sort of other preservatives to extend their shelf life while still make them edible.

A homemade pickle doesn’t need much stuff though. A bit or a bit more of salt about 2 – 4 tablespoon per 4 cups (20 – 40g per liter) and some spices or herbs like garlic, dill among the most common ones with onion, basil, black pepper, mustard or cloves following closely.

As the fermentation occurs naturally from the bacteria which is already present in the air, like it does with sour dough, we don’t need to close the top of our container tight but the cucumbers need to be kept under the water to prevent them from spoiling.

In case the water level drops so much during the fermentation that the cucumbers are exposed to the air, we have to refill our container with a bit of plain water.

Ingredients

Brine

For more detailed explanation have a look at how to make Brine.

1 tablespoon / 15g Salt (1.5% Brine) (minimum amount, not too salty)
4 cups / 1l Water

Pickle

2lb / 1kg Cucumbers
2 cloves Garlic
1 teaspoon Black pepper
1 teaspoon Dill or a bunch of fresh one
Optional
- Mustard seed
- Onion
- Cloves
- Bay leaf
- …

How to make Dill pickles

Brine should be made by heating up the water and dissolving the salt then cooling everything down but in our case this won’t be necessary. Just keep track of the amount of water is used filling up the jar and add the amount of salt required for pickling. Mind that, too much salt will create an overly salty pickle and a too small amount of salt won’t preserve the texture of the cucumbers letting them turning soft and soggy.
Wash the cucumbers thoroughly. Don’t overdo it, in cold water with a bit of scrubbing will be plenty.
If the cucumbers are big, we can chop off the tops and bottoms then pierce them through and cut them alongside essentially creating 4 slices of the one big one. It’s not necessary to cut them through to the top and bottom.
Fill our container with the cucumbers as tightly as possible.
Add garlic, black pepper, dill and the optional herbs and spices. Salt can be added now as well if we know about the rough amount of water needed for filling up the jar.
Fill the container up with water and add the necessary amount of salt that shouldn’t be less than 1 tablespoon per 4 cup (1l) of water.
Place something on top of the container that will keep the cucumbers down. This can be a small plate, clean stone, piece of wood or more organic materials like sliced potato, vine leaves or slices of bread among others.
Cover the whole thing with a plate or in case we use a pickling earthenware jar put the lid on and let it sit on room temperature for at least 2 days.
After two days check for firmness and flavor. If it is soggy and soft consider it a failed attempt and use more salt next time.