Slurp!

I found a variety of cucumber that grows well in containers. It’s called Little Leaf and it’s been great. We don’t eat a lot of pickles, but I do like them occasionally. I started eight seeds and selected them down to just one plant. It has been very hardy and produced one pickle-sized cucumber every day for weeks. The smaller leaves make it easy to see the fruit and it has been growing on a six foot stick I’ve stuck next to it (poor man’s trellis) quite happily.

I used the basic lacto-fermenting recipe to make these different varieties (left to right in the photo above):

Dill Garlic slices – Fermented with fresh dill and quartered garlic cloves
Lemon slices – Fermented with lemon basil, lemon thyme and some preserved lemon peel
Tzatziki slices – Fermented with mint, garlic and dill
Sweet Dill spears – Fermented with dill, then a tiny pinch of sucanat before refrigerating

The sweet dill spears were a request from my hubby. He’s not a big pickle eater and I figured a pinch of sweet would encourage him to eat these healthy, probiotic pickles!

I don’t like to can my pickles and kill all the good bacteria in them with the heat of canning, so this is definitely a shorter-term storage solution for the summer’s cucumber bounty.

Lacto-Fermented Pickles

The procedure is almost too simple to post. Slice the cucumbers into the desired shape and put them in a small canning jar, a few slices at a time. After each layer, sprinkle on a pinch of sea salt and any desired herbs. The entire  2-cup jar takes a little more than two teaspoons of salt. Keep layering until the jar is full.

Cover the jar with a piece of cloth or paper towel and leave at room temperature for an hour or two. The cucumbers will begin to weep out their natural juices. Push down gently but firmly on the pickles with a pounder (I use a wooden spoon) until the juices almost cover the pickles. Add a tablespoon of homemade whey if you have it, water if you don’t. You want the liquid to come up over the top of the cucumbers. Cover again with cloth or paper towel held on with a rubber band.

Now the hard part: wait. Somehow, some way, find the strength to ignore your pickles for three days. At the end of three days, cover them securely and refrigerate.

Tzatziki Salad Condiment

1 cups homemade yogurt
1/4 cup tzatziki pickles, chopped
pepper

Hang yogurt for several hours to let the whey drain out and make yogurt cheese. Scrape the cheese into a bowl and add pickles and just a little pepper. Stir well. Delicious with lamb.

This post is part of Tuesday Twister, hosted by Gnowfglins.

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