Pickles!!!

Of all the foods I grew up with, pickles of any kind were always among my favorites. When you mention 'pickles' most of us immediately think of dill pickles or bread and butter pickles, but of course, almost any food can be pickled. Sometimes, folks confuse 'pickling' with 'fermenting' but there is a distinction. True pickling requires salt, vinegar, and sometimes sugars. Fermentation, on the other hand, uses bacteria in our surroundings to create a sour taste. You can make 'pickles' by fermenting cucumbers (if you are old like me, you probably experienced fishing a fermented dill pickle out of a barrel at some point in your life), but this is not true pickling.

I've made a lot of pickles in my life. But there are always new experiments to try. Today I stumbled on a couple of recipes for pickled fish and pickled shrimp. Being a southern boy, we'd never have thought to pickle anything other than vegetables from our garden. But our northern neighbors from up north, many of them having a germanic or eastern european heritage, grew up pickling fish. I'm going to give this a try and it sounds delicious.

I have ZERO experience in pickling, but we are growing 5 cucumber plants this year just so we can learn. We all love pickles so I figured it would be cool to do this from our home garden.

Super easy way to make dill pickles. Take whole washed cucumbers, slice off a small bit where the 'bloom end' is (helps keep pickles crisp). In quarter jars, place a couple of garlic cloves, couple of bay leaves, a tablespoon of mustard seeds, and couple sprigs of fresh dill. Pack in cucumbers and top with garlic, bay leaves, mustard seeds and more fresh dill. Cover with cooled brine made with 3 tablespoons of kosher salt and 4 cups of white vinegar. You can either can by submerging in a boiling water bath for 10 minutes or so, or put them in the fridge. Really good!

Taking pickling to the extreme, giving pickled fish a try. This is apparently a northern Michigan/Minnesota thing which I'd never heard of nor tried. Got some cod and haddock sitting in salt and white vinegar in the fridge for the next 5 days, then will start the 2nd half of the process.

Pickled fish with sweet onions

Starting our pickling process now. Cucumbers are soaking for 24 hours, jars are getting sanitized.

I am very excited to see if I can do this well and be able to can food for us.

today's pickles. as soon as we were finished cleaning up, my wife came back in with 8 more cucumbers. We will definitely be canning more within the next week!!

we have cucumbers coming in at about 5-6 a day! We have dill pickles, sweet pickles, dilly green beans, and we are going to attempt to make relish here soon.

I used to help my grandmother make a sweet pickle. This pickle juice was great on collards and kale.

Right now we are using our cucumbers as garnish in our gin and tonics. Sometimes add a basil leaf as well.

3 jars of relish made last night. We went from wanting to see if we could can and how well we could to now ALL HANDS ON DECK!!