Say goodbye forever to soggy and sad pickles. These crunchy half sours are the perfect companion to your burgers and dogs. Let them sink into a strong Bloody Mary, batter them and fry them up into crispy little pickle chips. There really is no wrong way to eat them.
Active Time: 40 minutes
Total Time: 4-7 Days
1 Quart Sized Mason Jar
Place water in a bowl and add calcium chloride, whisk to dissolve.
Remove stems and thoroughly wash cucumbers. Cut cucumbers as desired.
Add cucumbers to calcium chloride bath. Cover and refrigerate for 12 – 24 hours.
Once time has elapsed, remove cucumbers from calcium chloride bath and rinse well.
Bring 500 ml of water to a boil. Add Salt. Stir until dissolved. Remove from heat and set aside to cool.
Cut garlic in half and removed the small green garlic sprout, which is bitter. Optionally, crush, slice, or mince cloves to intensify flavor.
Slice onion thinly.
Snip the fronds off the dill with scissors. Optionally, place the fronds in a teabag for easy removal later. Discard dill stems.
Sterilize jar, pebble, and lid by running them through the sanitize cycle in a dishwasher or submerge in boiling water for 10 minutes.
Add mustard seed, dill, garlic, bay leaf, onions, and cucumbers to sterilized mason jar.
Fill up to shoulder of jar with brine making sure to cover all the contents.
Leaving one inch of space between the contents and the top of the jar will ensure that the ferment does not bubble up into the airlock.
Place pickle pebble in mouth of jar to weigh down contents. Assemble Kraut Source or Sterilock lid and screw onto the top of the jar. If using the Kraut Source lid fill the moat with stilled white vinegar.
Leave jar at room temperature for one day to ferment, then place them in the refrigerator to finish the fermentation process. The cold temperature slows the fermentation process and also keeps the cucumbers crunchy.
Whole cucumbers will take 6 – 7 days. it is normal to see bubbling activity in the jar and for the brine to turn slightly cloudy as the lactobacillus multiply.
Replace the fermentation lid with a standard Mason jar lid. Store the pickles in your fridge up to two months (provided you don’t eat the whole jar in one go!)
