As I’m writing this I’m taking a break with a glass of kombucha and celebrating that I am DONE putting up the pickles for this year. In typical Kim-fashion I bought a huge 25 pound bag of local pickling cucumbers at one of our area farm stores. I hid it from my husband in the garage fridge (I was amazed it fit in there) because I knew what he was going to say… “who is going to eat all of these pickles??” Well, hopefully WE will!
I’ve done sauerkraut, ginger carrots and beets, but I had yet to do real dill pickles the lacto-fermented way, with no vinegar. The garlicky, sour and salty pickle that you would get from a great deli in New York City. You can see the results in the picture above – whole pickles with onion, garlic and dill in one of my two gallon glass jars (I have yet to find a ceramic crock). The orange glow is from the plastic plate that I also have weighted down with a mason jar full of water.
As typical for Nourishing Traditions recipes, the hardest part about making pickles is gathering the supplies and preparing the containers and ingredients. The actual ‘making of the pickles’ is pretty quick, especially for the whole dill pickles. The sliced also go quickly if you have a food processor. If you’re interested in the statistics, here’s what I was able to do with 25 pounds of cucumbers:
- 4 gallons whole garlic onion dills (this recipe)
- 2 gallons sliced bread & butter (sweet) style pickles
- 1 gallon garlic onion dill pickle ‘chips’ (this recipe except cucumbers sliced into chips)
Yeah, pretty sure we’ll have enough for the year! Enjoy the pickle recipe below and please feel free to share any insight or knowledge that you have regarding lacto-fermentation of cucumbers in the comments.
Tips for making Cucumber Pickles
- Add one grape leaf per quart to ensure that pickles stay crisp when they are fully fermented. They will last longer in the fridge too!
- Some time saving things that I did: I plugged up the sink and washed all of the cucumbers at once. I also rolled all of the garlic cloves (8 heads worth!) in this garlic peeler. It made it go MUCH quicker.
Fermented Cucumber Pickles
Rating: 3 forks (key)
Difficulty: Easy
Page in NT: 97 Yield: 1 quart
Ingredients:
[TNC added: 1/2 garlic head's worth of cloves and 1/2 onion per quart]
Preparation:
Wash cucumbers well and place in a quart-sized, wide-mouth mason jar. Combine remaining ingredients and pour over cucumbers, adding more water if necessary to cover the cucumbers. The top of the liquid should be at least 1 inch below the top of the jar. Cover tightly and keep at room temperature for about 3 days before transferring to cold storage.
Variation: Pickled Cucumber Slices Wash cucumbers well and slice at 1/4 inch intervals. Proceed with recipe. Pickles will be ready for cold storage after about 2 days at room temperature.
There are affiliate links in this post. I only include these links for products and services that I use myself and work hard to research and try out everything before publishing to my readers. If you have any comments about the links in any post please bring them to my attention at kim@theNourishingCook.com.
{ 14 comments… read them below or add one }
I have a brother-in-law who is dairy alergic including whey. Very curious to try these as we have only made pickles with vinegar and boiling water bath canned for long-term shekf storage.
Will these really turn out OK, with just added salt and will they still ferment properly to get the added benefit of live bacteria? This is probably one of those moments that will amaze me and others will say “duh!”
Hi Gus… thanks for the question, it’s a good one! Vinegar pickles is really a more recent invention that allowed the food industry to provide ‘shelf-stable’ pickles that needed no refrigeration. They don’t resemble the fermented version nutritionally though. Fermentation was the original way to preserve vegetables and fruits. That being said, you don’t ‘need’ whey to ferment vegetables, but it just gives the pickles a head start with good bacteria.
If you can’t or don’t want to use whey, that is totally fine. You just need to double the salt in the recipe that includes whey, or even just use lemon juice instead of the whey and leave the salt the same. Really the role of the salt/lemon juice is to ensure that bad bacterial growth doesn’t happen while the ‘good’ bacteria have a chance to multiply and preserve the food.
I hope this helps, let me know if you have any more questions…
Wow, 25 pouds of pickles. That would be our dream come true. Don’t have enough storage space for them right now…. but, someday. Enjoy those tasty treats.
I just did a small batch of this this week to see how we like the version I made (no mustard, lots of garlic)! I’m so excited!
Also, I heard that if you have ACE hardware stores around you that you can call in and have them order a crock for you and have it delievered to the store at no cost…and they should be a great price for crocks! These are also the “safer” crocks…I guess some of the older ones are not as safe to use because of the material it is made out of.
these are great!
I probably sound like a broken record, but I’m going to write it anyway: this is yet another food that I can not eat store bought because it is a migraine trigger. And this is yet another NT recipe that I have made and have had no migraines from! The way a food is made makes all the difference.
I didn’t eat pickles for more than ten years. Nevertheless, thanks to NT and WAPF- I can eat them once again. Hooray!
im really thankful that I just came upon your blog. I’m definitely going to start following you! so ive been fermenting tons of stuff in the fallon way, and though i love all the tastes, im definitely battling the fermented smells. especially from the batch of pickled garlic I made, by following her recipe. the only difference was that I didnt bake my garlic, but instead fermented it raw. it smells really, really strong. makes me gag a little! but it tastes fine. what do you think? is it safe.
I am curious to know, that if after the fermenting stage if you would be able to “can” these pickles in a water bath? I’d like to know because I do not have extra cold storage space, and am used to making small batches of pickles, but if they do well in my garden this year, would like to put up some crunchy pickles for later use in the year. I hate the normal soggy canned pickles. Any ideas on this?
Is there a way to seal can fermented pickles so that I don’t have to refrigerate them after I have made them? I have limited fridge space!
Thanks for the recipe. I made these a few days ago and loved it. Now that we’ve eaten the pickles is the liquid usable for something? I would think that the beneficial bacteria is also in the liquid.
Seems like you could use them in any salad dressing. Just be aware that it is super salty tasting and adjust the recipe. I’d be willing to experiment with a three (four?) bean salad using the liquid as part of the dressing. That’d most likely be good, but it would need some experimentation.
When you say “cover tightly” do you mean with a canning lid and ring?
I’m confused…what’s “cold storage”? Does that mean in the fridge?
Is there a way to seal can fermented pickles so that I don’t have to refrigerate them after I have made them? I have limited fridge space!
I totally understand the lack of fridge space! You could probably ‘can’ the pickles (consult your “Ball book” canning guide), but it kind of defeats the point of lacto-fermenting them, as the canning process will kill everything good in the pickles that you worked hard to get in there. Many people use a cellar, basement, or underground type storage for their lactoferments and that works well. I’ve heard of people even storing their ferments under their house. Cold storage can really be fridge or these other options.