The cucumber plants in the vegetable garden look terrible at the moment. The leaves keep being shredded by the wind. But, regardless, they’re fruiting like crazy.
So we’re enjoying cucumber soups, raitas and many salads. But, we’re also ‘putting some by’ to enjoy in the winter months, as gherkins, dill pickles, pickled cucumbers or whatever you like to call them.
For me, they’re brine cured pickled cucumbers and here’s how I make them…
Brine Cured Dill Pickles
Ingredients
First of all, we’re talking knobbly ridge cucumbers, not shiny smooth greenhouse grown varieties. But, that is the only rule I abide by.
Ideally I’d choose 4 inch long specimens. But, with the erratic growth, and tendency to hide, of these fruits, I pickle whatever I can get. If they’re reasonably small I pickle them whole, if not I slice them thickly. Whatever, the process is the same. Cucumbers pickled sliced, tend to soften more quickly, so I use these more as an ingredient in salads, salsas and so on, rather than as the delectable finger food a whole crunchy gherkin is.
Giving exact ingredients really wouldn’t be in the spirit of the self sufficient vegetable plot. If you’ve already made up some vinegar-brine, you can make these up whenever the garden is offering you at least one large jar’s worth of cucumbers for pickling.
In the spirit of making the most out of what your vegetable plot has to offer, I confess, I do not actually use dill. I know, it borders on the sacrilegious, but the truth is fennel grows wild everywhere here, so I use that instead. The flavor is similar and I am pretty flexible about my food. So use whatever you fancy too!
Method
Simply scrub the cucumbers, and slice/halve etc if very large and pack into a large sterilised glass jar. Add a few cloves of garlic, some extra peppercorns and 3 dill flower heads to each jar. Then top with vinegar-brine, making sure all the fruits are covered. Seal and leave for at least 10 days before eating.
You could leave these covered with a clean cloth, but not sealed, to ferment for a few weeks in the traditional manner, before sealing for long term storage. I don’t, the magic of ‘pickledom’ still works. The cucumbers gradually turn olive green, and the brine clears to give delicious, if not truly authentic, easy brine pickled cucumbers.
If you like your cucumbers a brighter shade of green, you can blanch them for a minute to help them keep their colour. But, for me, its all about laziness simplicity.
I find these keep for around 6 months. Any longer and they seem to start getting soft. This can be minimised by cutting off the blossom end of the cucumbers but that seems like waste to me, and I’m happy to eat the supply within the six months!
For a more self sufficient future
This sounds yummy, but sadly no cucumbers in our garden this year, the excessive rain would have scared them off anyway! What else are you pickling?
We have a lot of gherkins coming, do you have any sweet spiced recipes for pickling them? I’d love to give them a try.
Kelly, Try googling ‘Bread and Butter Pickle’. My mum makes something like it with thinly sliced cucumber and onion in a mustard seed, sweet sauce. I haven’t tried any sweet gherkins as I like’em sour!