Making Your Own Fermented Foods: Dill Pickles and Kimchi

By Tim Knight

Look in most cookbooks today for a pickle recipe and it will list vinegar as an ingredient. Often it will be distilled white vinegar. It has a nice clear color and a clean, neutral flavor, but it is dead. Most commercial vinegars, while they were probably produced by bacteria, are filtered and pasteurized and no longer have beneficial probiotic bacteria in them.

Not so with traditional lacto-fermented pickles. These use salt to control the fermentation conditions, limiting the species of bacteria that grow. The bacteria produce lactic and acetic acids as waste products, which make for a much more traditional pickle which has the added benefit of containing probiotics.

This process can be applied to nearly any vegetable. Kosher dill pickles, sauerkraut, and kimchi are familiar traditional options, but you can pickle beets, carrots, even fruit. And the seasonings you add are not limited to the garlic and dill of deli pickle fame. Really, your imagination and your palate are your only limitations.

I have already written about the process of fermentation in a previous article, so this will primarily be two recipes. First, kosher dill pickles (recipe from Cultures for Health).

Note that the tannins in the grape, oak, or horseradish leaves helps to keep the pickles crisp. I have also read that black tea will work. Unable to find the leaves, I tried that with a batch. While the pickles were crisp and the flavor good, the dark color of the tea made the pickles somewhat unsightly.

KOSHER DILL PICKLES

Ingredients:

5 tablespoons sea salt
2 quarts chlorine-free water
4–6 grape, oak, or horseradish leaves
6–9 cloves garlic, peeled
2 large heads of dill
Spices to taste: black peppercorns, red pepper flakes, mustard seeds, etc. (Secret ingredient: for an extra bite, add a few strips of fresh horseradish to the spice mix!)
Enough pickling cucumbers to fill a half-gallon jar

Preparation:

Make a brine by dissolving 5 tablespoons sea salt in 2 quarts of chlorine-free water.
In a half-gallon jar, add a couple of the tannin-containing leaves, a few cloves of garlic, the heads of dill, and one-third of the spices.
Pack half of the cucumbers tightly on top of the spices. (The longest ones work best at the bottom.)
Repeat a layer of leaves, garlic, and spices. Add another tightly packed layer of cucumbers and top them off with more garlic and spices.
Pour the brine over the pickles, leaving 1–2 inches of headspace. Place another tannin-containing leaf on top of the pickles as a cover between the pickles and the surface of the brine. Use a fermentation weight to keep the pickles under the liquid, if necessary. Cover the jar with a tight lid, airlock lid, or coffee filter secured with a rubber band.
Ferment at room temperature (60–70°F is preferred) until desired flavor and texture are achieved. If using a tight lid, burp daily to release excess pressure. The brine should turn cloudy and bubbly, and the pickles should taste sour when done.

Eat right away, or store in a refrigerator or root cellar for months and enjoy them all winter long.

Makes one half-gallon jar of pickles.

NAPA KIMCHI

(From Eating Korean by Cacelia Hae-Jin Lee, with some changes by me)

Ingredients:

1 cup plus 1 tablespoon coarse sea salt or kosher salt
Water
2 heads Napa cabbage, cut into quarters or 2-inch wedges, depending on size of cabbage, then chopped into 1-inch pieces
1 bulb garlic, cloves separated and peeled
1 (2-inch) piece of ginger root
1/4 cup fish sauce or Korean salted shrimp
1 Asian radish, peeled and grated
1 bunch of green onions, cut into 1-inch lengths (optional)
1/2 cup Korean chili powder (or more if you like your kimchi spicy)

Preparation:

Dissolve 1 cup salt in 1/2 gallon water. Soak cabbage in the salt water for 3 to 4 hours.
Combine garlic, ginger, and fish sauce or shrimp in food processor or blender until finely minced.
Remove cabbage from water and rinse thoroughly. Drain cabbage in colander, squeezing as much water from the leaves as possible. Chop into 1-inch pieces, discarding the hard base.
In large bowl, combine cabbage, radish, green onions, mustard greens (if using), garlic mixture, chili powder and 1 tablespoon salt. Toss gently but thoroughly. (If mixing with your hands, be sure to wear rubber gloves to avoid chili burn.)
Divide mixture among 4 (1-quart) jars or 1-gallon jar, pressing down firmly to remove any air bubbles.
Let sit for 2 to 3 days in a cool place before serving. Remove kimchi from jar and slice into 1-inch-length pieces. If serving before kimchi is fermented, sprinkle with a little bit of sesame oil and sesame seeds. Refrigerate after opening.

[Knight lives on Royalton Road.] ■

Part 1: Introduction Part 2: Kombucha Part 3: Sourdough Bread