Making More Cucumbers Than We Can Eat

A bumper crop of cucumbers is not a problem.  It's an opportunity.  Most everybody around gardens and has excess cucumbers.  We're eating cucumber and onion salad with olive oil and balsamic vinegar every day.  We're also making tzatziki often.  We can't catch up and the cucumber supply continues to build.  So what do you do?  We make dill pickles!

First we brine them in salt water overnight.  These are organic Boston Pickling Cucumbers.

We rinse them off in a colander.

The canning jars, lids and rings are all sterilized.

The cut up cukes are packed tightly in the pint-sized canning jars along with garlic, peppers, dill, and herb and spices.

All the while we're boiling a vinegar solution on the stove with pickling spices.  A canning funnel is used to fill each of the jars with the pickling liquid and then the lids are placed on the jars and the rings tightened finger tight.

We place them in a big pot on the stove and ensure that the jars are submerged beneath the water at least a couple inches.  This is water bath canning - no pressure.  Once the water comes to a boil, we set the kitchen timer for 10 minutes.

When the timer goes off, we remove the jars from the pot of water and set on a cooling rack.  Then we listen.  Can you hear it?  One by one, the lids begin popping as the jars cool.  That means they're sealed.

I put them on the window sill while the morning sun was shining through.  Always a nice sight.  For now, we'll stack the jars of pickles in the pantry.

As our supply of pickles grow, we'll continue to make pickles and stack them up in the pantry.  It's always nice to have a good supply of pickles to pull out of the pantry, pop the lid open and snack on dill pickles.

Cool Hand Cuke

The cucumber crop from Our Maker's Acres Family Farm is coming to a close after a very prolific season.  We plant two varieties - Boston Pickling Cucumbers and Suyo Long Cucumbers.  I like them both.  They climb on a trellis in the back part of the garden.  We have been eating cucumbers every day for weeks and weeks.

We eat them many different ways.  So far this year, we haven't made pickles like dill pickles or bread and butter pickles.  Tricia made her traditional Lacto-Fermented pickles, though.  She slices up the cukes, puts them in a quart jar, adds 4 tablespoons of whey (a by-product she gets when making kefir), 1 tablespoon kosher salt and adds water to fill the jar.  Then she'll sit the jars out for two days and then refrigerates them.  They'll last for quite a while.  The lacto-fermented pickles are crispy and salty.

I have to admit that I like dill pickles, but Tricia has never been a big cucumber-eater.  However, with the lacto-fermented pickles, she really enjoys them.

Another way that we enjoy eating them is in a fresh cucumber salad.  It is so cool and refreshing!  We dice up cucumbers fresh from the garden, slice up some purple onions that we just harvested, add some cut up homegrown tomatoes we just picked and toss in some blueberries from our bushes.  Finally, drizzle vinegar and oil over the top and add sea salt and cracked black pepper.  Allow to chill and you have a fantastic salad!

It's just not summer without a nice cucumber salad!

Once we polish off the last of the cukes this summer, I'll try to get a fall crop planted in late August so that we can enjoy a few more salads.  Perhaps we'll re-stock the pantry with more dill pickles with the Fall Crop.

Making Fermented Pickles

Like long, green, coiled snakes, our Soyu Long Cucumbers fill our garden bucket. Many get eaten fresh.  Some get turned into tzatziki.  We make pickles with others. Tricia does not like pickles.  Except for fermented pickles made like I'm about to show you.  She loves these and today, we are going to make a 1/2 gallon container of them.  Of course you need fresh cucumbers.  Today we'll use the Soyu Long ones, but we also use Boston Pickling Cucumbers as well.

When we make cheese or kefir, we have whey left over.  We keep whey in the fridge and it's a good thing as the recipe calls for 8 Tablespoons whey and 2 Tablespoons salt.  We add those ingredients to the jar.

Then we slice up the cucumbers and add enough to the jar to fill it up.  You can add some fresh or dried dill, if you wish.

Then, you simply add purified water to fill the jar.

Let this sit at room temperature in the "brine" for 24 hours and then move it into the refrigerator.  They are tangy and crisp.

As I stated Tricia loves them.  Since making this jar, it is already gone and I made up another batch for her today.  Not only are these good tasting, but the lacto-fermented pickles are good for you.

Making Dill Pickles

Our cucumber crop has been possibly the best crop in ten years.  Each day I go out and pick a bucketful.  My favorite way to eat them is to slice them up, splash a little vinegar and oil on top of them and then sprinkle some salt and pepper on them. They are cool and refreshing.  That's the way that we eat most of them.  We also use some to make tzatziki.  We also like pickles a lot, so today we're going to weigh out 3 pounds of some organic pickling cucumbers picked at the peak of crispness to make some dill pickles.

Fresh Picked!

There are many recipes out there.  I guess the easiest one is the one on the box of Morton Kosher salt. Morton actually has a salt mine not far from where we live.  It is at Weeks Island in Iberia Parish. The recipe calls for:

3 pounds pickling cucumbers
3/4 cup Morton® Coarse Kosher Salt
2 quarts water
3 cups distilled white vinegar
5 cups water
12 cloves garlic
2 tablespoons whole mixed pickling spice
6 sprigs of fresh dill
6 small hot peppers

Ingredients

Wash up the cucumbers.  Ours really don't take any scrubbing.  They were pretty clean and the rain had them washed nicely.  Cut them up into 3/4 inch slices.

Sliced

Dissolve all the salt in 2 quarts water and pour over the sliced cucumbers and let them sit for 24 hours, covered.

Soaking for 24 hours

After 24 hours has passed, drain the salt water from the bowl of cucumbers. Combine the vinegar and 5 cups water into a pot and add pickling spice and garlic. Bring it all to a boil.

Boiling vinegar/water/spices/garlic

While you are waiting on the water to boil, sterilize your jars, lids, rings and gaskets.  We use Tattler brand reusable lids/gaskets.  Pack your jars with the sliced cucumbers, and add a jalapeno pepper and a sprig of dill to each jar.

Packing the jars

Using a canning funnel, we pour the hot liquid into the jars, bringing the level of the liquid to within 1/2 inch of the top.  We pour the liquid through a strainer that is placed in the funnel.  The directions avoid this step as it calls for the garlic and pickling spices to be boiled in a cheesecloth bag.

Filling the jars

Once filled we put gaskets and lids on jars and tighten the rings/Tattler lids "finger-tight".  We place them in a water bath canner ensuring that the jars are covered with water by 2 inches.  The water is brought to a boil and once it is boiling, we start the timer for ten minutes

Processing the jars

When the buzzer goes off, we pull them out and place on a cooling rack and, according to Tattler directions, we further tighten down on the lids "hand tight."

Lettin' 'em cool

We allow them to cool and once we see the lids are sucked down ensuring a good seal, we remove the rings.  We test the seal be lifting the jar by the lid.  If the lid comes off, the pickles go in the fridge for eating soon.  If we can lift the jar by the lid and it doesn't pop off, we move them to the pantry.  We made 2 batches - one batch of 5 jars and the other with 6 jars.  We'll likely make several more batches to build up our "stash."

Making Pickled Cucumbers

Right now we have nice sized pickling cucumbers ready for harvest each and every day.  We've gotten nice rains and the cucumbers are crisp and refreshing.  I like slicing them up after chilling them and just eating with a splash of vinegar and a little salt and black pepper.  We also like to pickle them, but we do so using lacto-fermentation.  It is so simple.  We learned this method from the Weston A. Price Foundation, using Sally Fallon's Nourishing Traditions cookbook.

We wash the cucumbers, slice them up, and pack them into a quart jar.  On a side note, growing up I always heard that you should cut the ends off a cucumber and rub them against the cucumber to "take the bitterness out."  I also heard that it takes the "fever" out of a cucumber.  Has anyone heard of this?  I need to ask my mom about this to get more information.  First, how can rubbing the ends take bitterness out and how can a cucumber have a fever?  Hmmmm....   Anyway, back to pickle making:

Slicing up fresh cucumbers

Other than cucumbers, the only ingredients that you need are 1 tablespoon salt, 4 tablespoons whey and filtered water.  Whey is a by-product of making kefir (yogurt) and it is a natural preservative and is used as a starter culture for lacto-fermented vegetables such as cabbage (sauerkraut), carrots, beets, and of course, cucumbers. We keep a jar of whey in the fridge after making kefir for just this purpose.

Whey & Salt

Pour the salt and whey over the cucumbers that you've packed in the quart jar and then add water until you've covered the cucumbers.

Adding all ingredients

Believe it or not, that's all there is to it.  Put the lid on and cover tightly and allow to sit at room temperature for 2 days before placing in the refrigerator.  We normally wait a couple of weeks before eating.

Sitting at room temperature

Back in the old days, people used this method of preserving things.  They didn't have the luxury of refrigerators or freezers or a canning machine.  The lacto-fermented cucumbers are crisp and tangy and are cool, delicious and refreshing.  They are less acidic than those pickled in vinegar.  For some reason, they pair nicely with rice & gravy and meat.  While the cucumber harvest keeps coming, we'll always have at least one jar of these in the fridge.

Making pickles

We have lots of fresh cucumbers coming in right now.  We have two varieties planted - an organic pickling cucumber and a Japanese Long cucumber.  A cool, crisp cucumber is refreshing in this summer heat.  To preserve the harvest, those that we can't eat fresh out of the garden - we pickle using lacto-fermentation to preserve them.  The recipe comes from Nourishing Traditions, a publication put out by the Weston A. Price Foundation.

All you need are some cucumbers, some mustard seeds, some dill, 1 Tablespoon salt, 4 Tablespoons whey and some filtered water.  It is a very simple process. 


Ingredients

We've mixed the sea salt and whey in the wide mouth quart jar.  We would have added the mustard seeds and dill at this stage, but we were out and went ahead with the recipe.  Not to worry, they'll be eaten anyway!  Strangely enough, Tricia does not like cucumbers, but she likes them prepared like this.  The whey that we're using here is a by-product of making Kefir with our cows' milk.


Salt, whey and stir

Now we slice up all the cucumbers.


Slice up the cukes

Once they are sliced, simply put them in your jar with whey and salt until they fill the jar.


Fill the jar with sliced cucumbers

Add filtered water to top off the jar, leaving one inch of headroom at the top of the jar. 

Top off with filtered water

Cover the jar tightly and leave at room temperature for a couple of days before moving to your refrigerator.


Set on the counter at room temperature for a couple of days.

I told you that was easy!  Now all you gotta do is reach in the jar with a fork and eat one or two.