Craig's Kitchen - Fermented Pickles

[Music] hey guys welcome back to another episode of Craig's kitchen and although we're not in my kitchen today just like last time we were doing sauerkraut we're down in the basement in my brew cellar where I do all my beer brewing and wine brewing and actually what we're about to do right now is brew but we're gonna brew pickles ah what what's he talking about okay so a lot of times an you buy pickles in the store or even some people who make them you know they use vinegar and things like that to preserve and pickle the pickles pickle the cucumber's all right we're not gonna do that today in fact this is a much simpler method and if you like sour pickles then you're gonna love this okay now this is a method of fermentation and it's dead easy and you can't go wrong okay just follow these instructions I made some dill pickles a couple of weeks ago I wish I had a whole jar to show you in fact I'll show this jar before it started getting eaten a little cut away here delicious looking things and these were fermented and takes only four days to do this okay so I've got one here excuse me okay so what you need first of all cucumber now let's talk about it okay I'd love to get right in and start doing this but you need to know some stuff all right you don't want a cucumber is that have the wax on the outside okay ooh I don't know why anyone would want put that in there pickles and I don't know why they even do that wax the cucumbers I don't maybe protects me from bacteria I don't know so what I do is I buy these are called English cucumbers okay now usually they come wrapped in a plastic like this so you just you know you remove the plastic and you've got your nice unwaxed cucumbers also the English variety of cucumbers if you can get them in your area they're called I don't know why they're called English cucumbers but if you can get them they don't have as much seed matter inside okay so you're not dealing with that thing in the middle that's all mushy with the seeds these don't have that as as much of that the seeds are very small all right so that's what I use now if you can find the tiny little pickling cucumbers with the bumps on them Bob's your uncle use them okay that's what you really need to do but I can't find them around here and maybe you know where there's a farm somewhere you can get them fresh or maybe you can get fresh cucumbers without the wax but I just use the the English ones and they work cucumbers and fresh dill mmm okay fresh dill simple as that garlic right you just need some garlic a couple clothes I'm gonna use one clove I got two jars here so I'm probably gonna do two but we're just gonna do one for the video so we'll just we'll need one of those and that's so pickles dill garlic bay leaves okay I'll tell you why in a minute why you use them obviously for flavor but there's another reason select a jar that you think is gonna suit the kind of cut that you're gonna do with the pickles obviously with the ones you saw here I sliced them so this jar I think these are pretty much that one's a little smaller but they're almost the same and it wouldn't really matter how what kind of a jar you use you just pack them in there nice and away you go but today I'm gonna actually cut them in Long in in Spears okay the pickles and so I'm gonna try and find a jar that you know kind of you can cut if you cut the cucumber in half you could fit a bunch of Spears in the jar fatter jar would be nice it doesn't matter you mean these are these were jars so if things were in them you know I bought lip spaghetti sauce whatever you don't need to any special chars for this okay now one of the questions I get asked a lot for this is when you're making pickles with the vinegar people you know they boil the jars and they sanitized everything you don't have to do that with this okay wash your jars out with hot soapy water rinse them well and you'll be fine the whole point in this is to ferment the cucumber's so you need some wild yeasts you know that float around in the air you need some of that to help to ferment these now if you're a home brewer like I am you can brew your own beer and stuff then you might want to you'll probably have a sanitizer around that you use for that and if you want to sanitize the jars with that by all means okay if you're really paranoid but I always rinse them out afterwards anyway because I don't want the sanitizer being here I don't know what it would do to the to the fermentation it's fine for beer and wine but I would I don't know what it does with pickles okay okay let's get right to this the first thing we're gonna do though before we do any cutting is make the brine how do you do that dead easy here I've got four cups of warm water now a lot of people are gonna tell you not to use tap water and I'm not gonna argue with that although I successfully use my tap water and it's fine I've tried both tap water and bottled water no difference whatsoever in in the end result okay but when I tap water and your tap water are the same so if you're worried about that go get some spring water bottled water that doesn't have chlorine in it because I think that's what most people are worried about is the chlorine and I do have chlorine in my water but it doesn't seem to affect the taste of the pickle so four cups of warm water why do you want warm water because we need to dissolve a salt let's talk about the salt for a second you don't use table salt with the iodine in it you use sea salt this is gonna work the best okay I don't care what kind of sea salt you use I just use regular whatever you get from the grocery store white sea salt whatever it's called I don't know Mediterranean whatever four cups of warm water and two just under two tablespoons just a hair under anywhere between one and a half and two tablespoons of salt sea salt is fine so that's what I've got right there okay now I forgot to bring something to stir that with so I'm just gonna grab on my brewing utensils and away we go okay so there you have it there's your brine simple as that we'll give that a good old stir set that aside for a little while give that a chance to dissolve now we'll get into cutting our cucumbers let's start with this one here cut the ends off okay because I heard in several different videos that the ends of the pickles actually can because there's a little brown spot there they can cause the pickles to go soggy okay and that we don't want that alright and that's part of the reason why we're using the bay leaves because the leaves will help to keep the pickles crunchy alright alright so here we go let's cut this in half get that out of your way and let's go for this hopefully I can get this so that will fit into my jar that should do it alright so here we are now I'm gonna cut these you could slice them but these are quite fat cucumbers so I think what I'm gonna do is go ahead and cut them in I could cut them in quarters I guess yeah that's what I'll do quarters are good alright I don't have to be fussy about that just get them going there I'll cut another one because I'm gonna do two two jars of this eventually even after the video is done I'll probably do another another one so I'll just get this ready that one can go in thirds I can go in half because it's a little smaller alright okay there's no one you don't need to boil anything you don't need to sterilize anything it's all natural fermentation alright let's grab a jar okay a little bit of water in it get out of there first thing we're gonna do dill be generous with it okay be generous with the dill you want them to taste like dill pickles right so put lots in you can't put too much dill in there and even the the stems as well which if I can get this all out of the way here boy am I ever making a mess you know cut cut the stems up lots of flavor in those look at all that surface area that we've got there to go into here that's gonna be a beautiful flavor in there go all right garlic one clove of garlic do not crush it do not cut it I found putting more than one clove of garlic in or if you cut the garlic up it overpowers the pickles now that's up to you you can try it with one clove and then maybe another time try it with two cloves the nice thing about this is it only takes four days so you're not investing a lot of time in it and if you do something wrong you can always start over and try it again now I hope I can get these in there I might have to pick some shorter ones here just put them in that's all probably better off to lay the thing down and get them in there best we can yeah this isn't working the way it's supposed to for me but that's okay the point of the matter is is that you really want the pickles to be underneath the brine completely covered so what you see here is maybe I should have done it a little bit shorter cut and you know maybe for the next jar I'll cut them in half again and I'll jam them in there like that you know but yeah you kind of don't want them sticking out of the brine you and so we'll just jam these in there it's this easy guys it really is so that they're that way the hairs try a smaller one here that way they they won't float up because they're sort of jammed in there like that try one more see if I can get one more there we go the other reason why you want lots of room atop of the jar is because when you start pulling these out and eating them the brine is gonna go down and then you're gonna have pickles sticking out of the brine if you're worried about storing them for any period of time it kind of don't want that so this is really I'll tell you this is not an ideal situation however these pickles aren't going to be around for longer than a week anyway so I'm not too worried about it bay leaves childproof just put him in grab a couple tuck them down doesn't matter if they break you're not worried about like can you use a soup or a stew you know if someone's gonna choke you're not gonna worry put four or five bay leaves in there just use all the broken ones that you can't put in your soups and and there you have it okay that'll help keep these things crunchy a great flavor what else can you put in here the sky's the limit you can put peppercorns in whole peppercorns you can put a jalapeno get a jalapeno pepper slice it up put it in there with this you're gonna have spicy dill pickles you can put herbs in you can put like a rag in oh I'm Rosemarie you can put you know basil anything you like hot rod red pepper flakes it really doesn't matter onions okay that's that's how you amazing this is so now we just go ahead and we pour in our brine and cover the pickles I'm just trying to hear me go that's good a little bit more now that's all there is to it put the lid on just leave it loose don't tighten it too tight you want the when this ferments the gases are this there's gonna be gases produced carbon dioxide and they need to escape if you tighten it all the way boom that's your good you know you might have a little problem there so I'm just gonna sort of you know loosely make sure that it's not all the way tight and we're all set you put this in a dark corner of your house where it's fairly warm I would suggest the warmest room of your house possible and let it sit for exactly four days okay if you let it sit any longer than that it might over ferment and the pickles can go soft the other thing too is that if you know after three days if you want you can take off the lid try one of your pickles okay you could even cut a short one and put it on top and that one can be your sort of your test pickle after three days so that you can see how it's coming along and you'll know when they're done and after you do this a few times you'll get used to how your house the temperature of your house if it's colder in your house than 72 degrees Fahrenheit then you might have let them sit a little longer that's something that you're gonna have to work out on your own okay that's it I mean when you're done you will end up what's going to happen is they're gonna start to lose you see how these ones are still obviously bright green okay and the ones that have fermented I'll get one another one because I'll eat it anyway oh by the way you can also eat the garlic okay whole raw not after four days though wait wait about two or three weeks even if you finish the pit schools leave this in the fridge leave the garlic in there and after about three weeks you can eat this raw mmm mmm pickled garlic there's another one for you now you can see what's gonna happen so after about four days they're gonna lose their color they're gonna go kind of white okay after four days you're gonna put them in the fridge the refrigerator and when they get cold they're going to turn that color and that's because the pickles are gonna reabsorb the brine mixture and there ven a goal transition like that I'm not gonna eat that right now I've done enough crunching on this video now that's it you're done so enjoy that and let me know what you think down in the comments one of the things I want to mention before I go is how healthy this is for you these are absolutely so incredible for your pipes okay your bowels your intestines your stomach everything that you will notice a difference in the way your body works like it'd you not the other thing that I'd like to point out don't throw away the brine why not because you can add some of this to your next batch and it will kick-start the fermentation and get it going faster I want you guys to try this thank you so much for watching this episode of Craig because Christ's kitchen will be back with more very soon Cheers and happy pickling [Music] okay so we got to stop because you're getting the good bacteria that these lactose bacteria creates I'm gonna start this over BAM why is it warm because you're gonna use salt and you need to dissolve the salt in the water woops gosh there is a blooper [Music]

Channel: CraigTube

Views: 300,760

Rating: 4.8904109 out of 5

Keywords: Pickling, Pickles In India And Pakistan (Food), fermented foods, fermented veggies, fermented vegetables, fermented cucumbers, how to make sour pickles, how to make sour dill pickles, how to ferment cucumbers, how to ferment vegetables, Vegetable (Food)

Id: Ipxy-GuSIhU

Length: 18min 23sec (1103 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 09 2015