• ..make lacto-fermented preserved lemons!*

I wasn’t planning on bringing home 15-pounds of organic lemons, but the price – $3.99 for 5 pounds – made them irresistible! Now was as good a time as any to experiment, recreating traditionally-preserved lemons, a flavor we discovered in Sorrento.

I had always thought preserved-lemons were only a decorative item, adding a splash of color to American-Italian restaurants, and nothing more.

Boy, was I wrong!

Lemon Epiphany

It took a trip to Sorrento, and a tasting sample offered by a shopkeeper – lovely little puffs of still-warm bread, slathered with a thick-layer of farm-fresh butter, laced with preserved lemon zest – for me to see the light.

It was a lemon epiphany event! Salty, sweet, bitter, sour – every flavor imaginable, danced across my tongue, a surprised, “Oh!”, escaping my lips.

The shopkeeper tapped a large, lemon-filled jar – there must have been 40 or more lemons floating in brine – with his modern microplane zester. “Most think these lemons, swimming in this very special brine in here, yes? That they are bella. They’re not for looking. They’re for touching. So you take home. You touch. You eat. You enjoy.”

Preserving Lemons was Practical

Popular throughout Italy and northern Africa, preserving the season’s harvest, a rich source of Vitamin C.

When it comes to making food, preserved lemons add a lively flavor-note from appetizers to desserts. Preserved citrus fruit have always been popular in the Pacific Rim, commonly salt-cured and eaten as a condiment, a technique which I’ll detail in another article. My purpose for this article will be Moroccan and Italian brined lemons.

• Research Food Origins to Discover Traditional Recipes*

When researching recipes, it helps to first study the foods origins, in this case, the history of the lemon, which turns out to be a bit of a mystery…

“The lemon’s origins are mysterious…attributed to many places. Some have speculated China, yet there’s no recorded history before the 10th century when two bottles of lemon juice were presented as gifts to the emperor, implying a degree of rarity. Lemons were featured in Pompeii, Greece and Rome wall-paintings and mosaics around 185BC, but none offers ideal growing conditions. The mystery remains.” Cheap Eats

Researching traditional lemon-preservation methods turned out to be even more mysterious than the origins of the lemon!

First, I weeded out 99% of the recipes, most of them using modern, wasteful notions that the flesh and lemon juice should be thrown away! Others mentioned boiling the rind for 30-minutes in order to “soften” it, something that spontaneous lacto-fermentation will do very naturally, keeping all the nutrients alive!

I culled the possible recipes down to two traditional, viable options –

• Italian – whole, raw lemons brined in salted lemon juice
• Spiced Moroccan – basically, the Italian fermented lemons, kicked up a level, adding whole spices: bay leaves, cinnamon sticks, allspice, and coriander seed, mirroring spiced Moroccan foods

Names are sometimes confusing…

If you decide to strike out on your own, hunting down traditional lacto-fermented preserved lemons, they are known by a wide variety of names –

• Naturally-preserved
• Brined
• Salt-preserved
• Cured
• Salt-Cured
• Naturally-fermented
• Pickled
• Confit – A French term used for the preserving of meats or fruit

Those that utilize a brine, such as my recipes, create flavors reminiscent of the liquor, Limencello – sour, more mellow then fresh, without the alcohol taste.

When I asked my 14-year-old why the fermented lemons had become her favorite lacto-fermented food, she said,

“When you first bite in to the lemon slice, it has a surprising taste, different than what you’d expect. It’s tangy but sweet, all at the same time, with a bitterness that almost burns, although it is satisfying. I love it!”

Lisbon, Eureka or Meyer?

Over 90% of the lemons grown and sold in the United States are the thick-skinned “Lisbon and Eureka” varieties. They ship well, store well, and have what we’ve grown to know as the classic lemon flavor.

Purists claim that Meyer lemons are the only appropriate lemons to lacto-ferment. My first problem is Meyer lemons aren’t really lemons, but instead, a cross between a lemon, mandarin or orange. They’re not as acidic, but instead, mild compared to Lisbon or Eureka.

While Meyer lemons (as well as limes and grapefruit!) would be fun to lacto-ferment, and probably wonderful for making a classic Italian gelato, I’m going to stick with the more common, easier-to-find, bigger-flavor true-lemons for that bright acidic, salty, full-flavor note available in all portions or combinations of its components, including –

• slices of flesh and rind
• zest from rind
• whole rind
• flesh only
• juice
• Combination of all of the above!

I fully expect my 3-liter Pickl-It, packed with over 16-lemons, will last for well over a year, unless, of course, the 14-year-old discovers where the Pickl-It is hidden.

Recipe: Pickl-It Lacto-fermented Lemons

• ..make lacto-fermented preserved lemons!*

I wasn’t planning on bringing home 15-pounds of organic lemons, but the price – $3.99 for 5 pounds – made them irresistible! Now was as good a time as any to experiment, recreating traditionally-preserved lemons, a flavor we discovered in Sorrento.

I had always thought preserved-lemons were only a decorative item, adding a splash of color to American-Italian restaurants, and nothing more.

Boy, was I wrong!

Lemon Epiphany

It took a trip to Sorrento, and a tasting sample offered by a shopkeeper – lovely little puffs of still-warm bread, slathered with a thick-layer of farm-fresh butter, laced with preserved lemon zest – for me to see the light.

It was a lemon epiphany event! Salty, sweet, bitter, sour – every flavor imaginable, danced across my tongue, a surprised, “Oh!”, escaping my lips.

The shopkeeper tapped a large, lemon-filled jar – there must have been 40 or more lemons floating in brine – with his modern microplane zester. “Most think these lemons, swimming in this very special brine in here, yes? That they are bella. They’re not for looking. They’re for touching. So you take home. You touch. You eat. You enjoy.”

Preserving Lemons was Practical

Popular throughout Italy and northern Africa, preserving the season’s harvest, a rich source of Vitamin C.

When it comes to making food, preserved lemons add a lively flavor-note from appetizers to desserts. Preserved citrus fruit have always been popular in the Pacific Rim, commonly salt-cured and eaten as a condiment, a technique which I’ll detail in another article. My purpose for this article will be Moroccan and Italian brined lemons.

• Research Food Origins to Discover Traditional Recipes*

When researching recipes, it helps to first study the foods origins, in this case, the history of the lemon, which turns out to be a bit of a mystery…

“The lemon’s origins are mysterious…attributed to many places. Some have speculated China, yet there’s no recorded history before the 10th century when two bottles of lemon juice were presented as gifts to the emperor, implying a degree of rarity. Lemons were featured in Pompeii, Greece and Rome wall-paintings and mosaics around 185BC, but none offers ideal growing conditions. The mystery remains.” Cheap Eats

Researching traditional lemon-preservation methods turned out to be even more mysterious than the origins of the lemon!

First, I weeded out 99% of the recipes, most of them using modern, wasteful notions that the flesh and lemon juice should be thrown away! Others mentioned boiling the rind for 30-minutes in order to “soften” it, something that spontaneous lacto-fermentation will do very naturally, keeping all the nutrients alive!

I culled the possible recipes down to two traditional, viable options –

• Italian – whole, raw lemons brined in salted lemon juice
• Spiced Moroccan – basically, the Italian fermented lemons, kicked up a level, adding whole spices: bay leaves, cinnamon sticks, allspice, and coriander seed, mirroring spiced Moroccan foods

Names are sometimes confusing…

If you decide to strike out on your own, hunting down traditional lacto-fermented preserved lemons, they are known by a wide variety of names –

• Naturally-preserved
• Brined
• Salt-preserved
• Cured
• Salt-Cured
• Naturally-fermented
• Pickled
• Confit – A French term used for the preserving of meats or fruit

Those that utilize a brine, such as my recipes, create flavors reminiscent of the liquor, Limencello – sour, more mellow then fresh, without the alcohol taste.

When I asked my 14-year-old why the fermented lemons had become her favorite lacto-fermented food, she said,

“When you first bite in to the lemon slice, it has a surprising taste, different than what you’d expect. It’s tangy but sweet, all at the same time, with a bitterness that almost burns, although it is satisfying. I love it!”

Lisbon, Eureka or Meyer?

Over 90% of the lemons grown and sold in the United States are the thick-skinned “Lisbon and Eureka” varieties. They ship well, store well, and have what we’ve grown to know as the classic lemon flavor.

Purists claim that Meyer lemons are the only appropriate lemons to lacto-ferment. My first problem is Meyer lemons aren’t really lemons, but instead, a cross between a lemon, mandarin or orange. They’re not as acidic, but instead, mild compared to Lisbon or Eureka.

While Meyer lemons (as well as limes and grapefruit!) would be fun to lacto-ferment, and probably wonderful for making a classic Italian gelato, I’m going to stick with the more common, easier-to-find, bigger-flavor true-lemons for that bright acidic, salty, full-flavor note available in all portions or combinations of its components, including –

• slices of flesh and rind
• zest from rind
• whole rind
• flesh only
• juice
• Combination of all of the above!

I fully expect my 3-liter Pickl-It, packed with over 16-lemons, will last for well over a year, unless, of course, the 14-year-old discovers where the Pickl-It is hidden.

Recipe: Pickl-It Lacto-fermented Lemons

• ..make lacto-fermented preserved lemons!*

I wasn’t planning on bringing home 15-pounds of organic lemons, but the price – $3.99 for 5 pounds – made them irresistible! Now was as good a time as any to experiment, recreating traditionally-preserved lemons, a flavor we discovered in Sorrento.

I had always thought preserved-lemons were only a decorative item, adding a splash of color to American-Italian restaurants, and nothing more.

Boy, was I wrong!

Lemon Epiphany

It took a trip to Sorrento, and a tasting sample offered by a shopkeeper – lovely little puffs of still-warm bread, slathered with a thick-layer of farm-fresh butter, laced with preserved lemon zest – for me to see the light.

It was a lemon epiphany event! Salty, sweet, bitter, sour – every flavor imaginable, danced across my tongue, a surprised, “Oh!”, escaping my lips.

The shopkeeper tapped a large, lemon-filled jar – there must have been 40 or more lemons floating in brine – with his modern microplane zester. “Most think these lemons, swimming in this very special brine in here, yes? That they are bella. They’re not for looking. They’re for touching. So you take home. You touch. You eat. You enjoy.”

Preserving Lemons was Practical

Popular throughout Italy and northern Africa, preserving the season’s harvest, a rich source of Vitamin C.

When it comes to making food, preserved lemons add a lively flavor-note from appetizers to desserts. Preserved citrus fruit have always been popular in the Pacific Rim, commonly salt-cured and eaten as a condiment, a technique which I’ll detail in another article. My purpose for this article will be Moroccan and Italian brined lemons.

• Research Food Origins to Discover Traditional Recipes*

When researching recipes, it helps to first study the foods origins, in this case, the history of the lemon, which turns out to be a bit of a mystery…

“The lemon’s origins are mysterious…attributed to many places. Some have speculated China, yet there’s no recorded history before the 10th century when two bottles of lemon juice were presented as gifts to the emperor, implying a degree of rarity. Lemons were featured in Pompeii, Greece and Rome wall-paintings and mosaics around 185BC, but none offers ideal growing conditions. The mystery remains.” Cheap Eats

Researching traditional lemon-preservation methods turned out to be even more mysterious than the origins of the lemon!

First, I weeded out 99% of the recipes, most of them using modern, wasteful notions that the flesh and lemon juice should be thrown away! Others mentioned boiling the rind for 30-minutes in order to “soften” it, something that spontaneous lacto-fermentation will do very naturally, keeping all the nutrients alive!

I culled the possible recipes down to two traditional, viable options –

• Italian – whole, raw lemons brined in salted lemon juice
• Spiced Moroccan – basically, the Italian fermented lemons, kicked up a level, adding whole spices: bay leaves, cinnamon sticks, allspice, and coriander seed, mirroring spiced Moroccan foods

Names are sometimes confusing…

If you decide to strike out on your own, hunting down traditional lacto-fermented preserved lemons, they are known by a wide variety of names –

• Naturally-preserved
• Brined
• Salt-preserved
• Cured
• Salt-Cured
• Naturally-fermented
• Pickled
• Confit – A French term used for the preserving of meats or fruit

Those that utilize a brine, such as my recipes, create flavors reminiscent of the liquor, Limencello – sour, more mellow then fresh, without the alcohol taste.

When I asked my 14-year-old why the fermented lemons had become her favorite lacto-fermented food, she said,

“When you first bite in to the lemon slice, it has a surprising taste, different than what you’d expect. It’s tangy but sweet, all at the same time, with a bitterness that almost burns, although it is satisfying. I love it!”

Lisbon, Eureka or Meyer?

Over 90% of the lemons grown and sold in the United States are the thick-skinned “Lisbon and Eureka” varieties. They ship well, store well, and have what we’ve grown to know as the classic lemon flavor.

Purists claim that Meyer lemons are the only appropriate lemons to lacto-ferment. My first problem is Meyer lemons aren’t really lemons, but instead, a cross between a lemon, mandarin or orange. They’re not as acidic, but instead, mild compared to Lisbon or Eureka.

While Meyer lemons (as well as limes and grapefruit!) would be fun to lacto-ferment, and probably wonderful for making a classic Italian gelato, I’m going to stick with the more common, easier-to-find, bigger-flavor true-lemons for that bright acidic, salty, full-flavor note available in all portions or combinations of its components, including –

• slices of flesh and rind
• zest from rind
• whole rind
• flesh only
• juice
• Combination of all of the above!

I fully expect my 3-liter Pickl-It, packed with over 16-lemons, will last for well over a year, unless, of course, the 14-year-old discovers where the Pickl-It is hidden.

Recipe: Pickl-It Lacto-fermented Lemons

• ..make lacto-fermented preserved lemons!*

I wasn’t planning on bringing home 15-pounds of organic lemons, but the price – $3.99 for 5 pounds – made them irresistible! Now was as good a time as any to experiment, recreating traditionally-preserved lemons, a flavor we discovered in Sorrento.

I had always thought preserved-lemons were only a decorative item, adding a splash of color to American-Italian restaurants, and nothing more.

Boy, was I wrong!

Lemon Epiphany

It took a trip to Sorrento, and a tasting sample offered by a shopkeeper – lovely little puffs of still-warm bread, slathered with a thick-layer of farm-fresh butter, laced with preserved lemon zest – for me to see the light.

It was a lemon epiphany event! Salty, sweet, bitter, sour – every flavor imaginable, danced across my tongue, a surprised, “Oh!”, escaping my lips.

The shopkeeper tapped a large, lemon-filled jar – there must have been 40 or more lemons floating in brine – with his modern microplane zester. “Most think these lemons, swimming in this very special brine in here, yes? That they are bella. They’re not for looking. They’re for touching. So you take home. You touch. You eat. You enjoy.”

Preserving Lemons was Practical

Popular throughout Italy and northern Africa, preserving the season’s harvest, a rich source of Vitamin C.

When it comes to making food, preserved lemons add a lively flavor-note from appetizers to desserts. Preserved citrus fruit have always been popular in the Pacific Rim, commonly salt-cured and eaten as a condiment, a technique which I’ll detail in another article. My purpose for this article will be Moroccan and Italian brined lemons.

• Research Food Origins to Discover Traditional Recipes*

When researching recipes, it helps to first study the foods origins, in this case, the history of the lemon, which turns out to be a bit of a mystery…

“The lemon’s origins are mysterious…attributed to many places. Some have speculated China, yet there’s no recorded history before the 10th century when two bottles of lemon juice were presented as gifts to the emperor, implying a degree of rarity. Lemons were featured in Pompeii, Greece and Rome wall-paintings and mosaics around 185BC, but none offers ideal growing conditions. The mystery remains.” Cheap Eats

Researching traditional lemon-preservation methods turned out to be even more mysterious than the origins of the lemon!

First, I weeded out 99% of the recipes, most of them using modern, wasteful notions that the flesh and lemon juice should be thrown away! Others mentioned boiling the rind for 30-minutes in order to “soften” it, something that spontaneous lacto-fermentation will do very naturally, keeping all the nutrients alive!

I culled the possible recipes down to two traditional, viable options –

• Italian – whole, raw lemons brined in salted lemon juice
• Spiced Moroccan – basically, the Italian fermented lemons, kicked up a level, adding whole spices: bay leaves, cinnamon sticks, allspice, and coriander seed, mirroring spiced Moroccan foods

Names are sometimes confusing…

If you decide to strike out on your own, hunting down traditional lacto-fermented preserved lemons, they are known by a wide variety of names –

• Naturally-preserved
• Brined
• Salt-preserved
• Cured
• Salt-Cured
• Naturally-fermented
• Pickled
• Confit – A French term used for the preserving of meats or fruit

Those that utilize a brine, such as my recipes, create flavors reminiscent of the liquor, Limencello – sour, more mellow then fresh, without the alcohol taste.

When I asked my 14-year-old why the fermented lemons had become her favorite lacto-fermented food, she said,

“When you first bite in to the lemon slice, it has a surprising taste, different than what you’d expect. It’s tangy but sweet, all at the same time, with a bitterness that almost burns, although it is satisfying. I love it!”

Lisbon, Eureka or Meyer?

Over 90% of the lemons grown and sold in the United States are the thick-skinned “Lisbon and Eureka” varieties. They ship well, store well, and have what we’ve grown to know as the classic lemon flavor.

Purists claim that Meyer lemons are the only appropriate lemons to lacto-ferment. My first problem is Meyer lemons aren’t really lemons, but instead, a cross between a lemon, mandarin or orange. They’re not as acidic, but instead, mild compared to Lisbon or Eureka.

While Meyer lemons (as well as limes and grapefruit!) would be fun to lacto-ferment, and probably wonderful for making a classic Italian gelato, I’m going to stick with the more common, easier-to-find, bigger-flavor true-lemons for that bright acidic, salty, full-flavor note available in all portions or combinations of its components, including –

• slices of flesh and rind
• zest from rind
• whole rind
• flesh only
• juice
• Combination of all of the above!

I fully expect my 3-liter Pickl-It, packed with over 16-lemons, will last for well over a year, unless, of course, the 14-year-old discovers where the Pickl-It is hidden.

Recipe: Pickl-It Lacto-fermented Lemons

The following recipes offer a wide-variety of uses for lacto-fermented lemons. Some recipes include instructions for making quick-versions of “preserved” lemons, typically involving the boiling of the lemons, or dry-salt curing. Neither of these methods offers the same flavor development and advantages that traditional 30-days lacto-fermented lemons offer. For directions on making your own lacto-fermented lemons – so easy to do! – see our articles:

When Life Gives You Lemons...

Italian or Moroccan-Spiced Lacto-Fermented Lemon Recipe

Artichokes with preserved lemon dressing

BBC recipe using preserved sweet lemon

Emeril’s Moroccan-Style Braised Chicken Thighs with Preserved Lemon and Green Olives

Make Your Own Limencello

Recipe Bridge, wide-assortment of recipes using preserved lemons

What to do with Moroccan Preserved Lemons

Fried Artichokes with Preserved Lemon Dressing

Chowhound Moroccan Preserved Lemons

Green-Lentils-With-Roasted-Beets-and-Preserved-Lemon

Lemon Confit – quick method, use your own lacto-fermented lemons with their recipe ideas – Food & Wine

Hot peppers – whole, sliced or mashed – play an extensive part in food history, used throughout the world to season dishes, as well as, condiments accompanying flavorful entrees. Eating raw, fresh peppers was an occasional treat, at harvest-time, with the majority of the crop preserved using dehydration, dry-salting or fermenting.

One of our favorite local Vietnamese restaurants serves a bowl of fermented jalapeno rings, which we liberally add to steaming bowls of pho, a bone-broth soup.

Lacto-fermenting peppers converts the raw, often-bitter and intense heat sensation to a more complex, “softer” or mellow taste that isn’t as shocking to the tastebuds, but instead, alluring.

A complex pepper mash, which can be eaten as-is, or used to bottle your own pepper sauce, deserves to be taste-profiled like a fine, aged-wine. Its “heat”, much like the grape’s essence, isn’t diminished but, instead, transformed in new flavor complexities, unlocked during fermentation. (Yokotsuka et. al 1994)

Pickl-It fermented peppers are convenient to have on-hand for creating a wide-variety of dishes including, Thai, Chinese, Mexican, Vietnamese and Ethiopian foods. Even if the use of pepper mash, sauce or slices and rings aren’t traditional, start your own traditions! You can even start your own pepper-tradition. A dollop of jalapeno pepper mash, topping off American-style biscuits and sausage gravy, or adding pickled pepper rings to our pizza (after it has been baked), have become our family favorites.

Fermented Pickled-Pepper Nutrition Picking A Pepper to Ferment Pickl-It Pickled Pepper Recipe

“Pepper fermentation was adopted from the wine aging process. The raw peppers are normally ground into mash, together with salt, and fermented before bottling. Aging helps the mash to develop flavors, bouquet and odor.“ Thesis on Fermented Pepper Mash

Lacto-fermented peppers are a deferred-gratification food. Unlike sauerkraut, cukes or carrots, which can be enjoyed within weeks of fermenting, peppers have more in common with a fine wine, which benefits by being tucked away, forgotten, its physicochemical properties needing a minimum of 3-months (6 is better) and up to 3-years, to mingle, creating flavors you didn’t know existed.

Home-made pepper mash, which can be used to create your own bottled sauces, or “as is”, is like a finely-ground salsa. Where fresh peppers are about the “heat”, fermented peppers are all about deep, rich flavor. When we finally made and tasted our first pepper mash, our first reaction was, “What took us so long to make this?”

Each variety of pepper, like grapes, develop their own unique flavors, so playing with combinations of peppers creates yet another level of flavor!

You cannot go wrong making fermented peppers. The most difficult part, once you know how good these taste, is waiting for the pickled-peppers or pepper mash to be ready to eat!

Whole fermented peppers or pickled pepper rings need to ferment for at least 3-months, but 6-months is better.

Full-flavored pepper mash is tasty at 3-months, but do yourself a favor and wait for at least 6-months to 1-year, for an even more mellow, full-bodied flavor. You won’t be disappointed!

Recipe – General Instructions

• Know your pepper varieties.
• Select fresh chiles that have bright, deep color with a smooth skin and no wrinkles, blemishes or cuts.
• Organic, chemical-free or biodynamic are preferred, instead of conventional.
• Because peppers continue to ripen, use immediately.
• If you can’t use immediately and must store them, do not wrap in plastic, but instead, place them in a single layer on a cotton towel, rolling them up jelly-roll style – storing in the refrigerator.
• When ready to use, clean the peppers – washing away sand or dried-on leaf material.
• Trim off stems.
• Remove the seeds if you want your heat on the mild-side.
• Please don’t forget to wear gloves, don’t touch your eyes, and don’t breath in their fumes – especially important to remember with ground or pureed peppers!

Whole Peppers or Slices in a 5.4% brine

1. Place whole peppers or slices in Pickl-It container, leaving at least 1 1/2-head-space between the top of the peppers and the bottom of the lid.
2. Cover them with a 5.4% brine.
3. Place the Pickl-It Dunk’R on top the peppers, holding them under the brine.
4. If you have difficulty keeping peppers under the brine, refer to this faq.
5. Latch the Pickl-It, place water in the airlock
6. Place Pickl-It container in dark corner of kitchen counter, covering sides with a towel to block light; let sit for 5-10 days (cooler temperatures, below 68F, take longer; temperatures over 72F take shorter amounts of time)
7. After 5-10 days, move the Pickl-It to the refrigerator, keeping the airlock in place. The peppers will continue to ferment, emitting carbon dioxide.
8. Continue to ferment, refrigerated, at least 3 months, but 6 months is even better.
9. Change the water in the airlock weekly, so it doesn’t become stale.

Pepper slices, such as jalapeno, can be fermented with or without the seeds.

Use the same cleaning and preparation procedure for slices, as you would for whole peppers. The same peppers that can be fermented whole, are also wonderful as slices.

1. Remove the stem, and any dried tips, slicing peppers into 1/4-inch slices.
2. 1-lb of whole peppers will easily fit into a 3/4-liter Pickl-It.
3. Leave about 1 1/2-inches of headspace between the top of the peppers and the underside of the Pickl-It lid.
4. Use a 5.4% brine following the same procedure as the whole peppers.
5. Place the Pickl-It Dunk’R on top the peppers, holding them under the brine.
6. If you have difficulty keeping peppers under the brine, refer to this faq.
7. Latch the Pickl-It, place water in the airlock.
8. Place Pickl-It container in dark corner of kitchen counter, covering sides with a towel to block light; let sit for 5-10 days (cooler temperatures, below 68F, take longer; temperatures over 72F take shorter amounts of time)
9. After 5-10 days, move the Pickl-It to the refrigerator, keeping the airlock in place. The peppers will continue to ferment, emitting carbon dioxide.
10. Continue to ferment, refrigerated, at least 3 months, but 6 months is even better.
11. Change the water in the airlock weekly, so it doesn’t become stale.

Removing some of the seeds makes the slices more “kid-friendly”.

We’ve found the fastest way to move seeds, is by using a funnel tip that’s slightly smaller than the pepper slice diameter. Push the funnel into the center of the pepper ring, “cutting” the seeds from the pepper flesh, much like a cookie cutter cuts shapes out of dough. Some seeds will cling to the pepper rings, but we’re not diligent in trying to remove all of them.

Dry-Brine Pepper Mash

Pepper mash uses a dry-brining technique – salt, added to the pureed peppers creates its own brine, drawing the water from the pepper cells.

One pound of pureed peppers produces one pint of mash – enough for 1 3/4-liter Pickl-It.

Removing about 75% of the seeds, makes them more family-friendly. On the other hand, a few more seeds might keep our 9-year-old from double-dipping, eating the mash by the spoonfuls!

To make a pepper mash, any of the varieties on this page, labeled, “Ferment” make a wonderful mash! Jalapeno mash is very similar in flavor to salsa verde, adding a warm glow to a wide variety of foods. Cherry pepper mash is a superb replacement for traditional red-bottled sauces. We haven’t gone as far as to make our mashes into sauces, because, we’ve been enjoying them too much as they are!

For a chunky mash texture, use your food processor with its steel blade. A Vita-Mix will create a much smoother puree – almost that of a smooth sauce, but be careful. Vita-Mix tend to run “hot”, which can kill off important enzymes and heat liable nutrients of your peppers, so don’t puree longer than 20-seconds.

1. Follow the general directions on choosing and cleaning peppers.
2. Weigh the final quantity of peppers freed of their stems and seeds. This is important because the amount of salt you’re going to use is determined by the total weight of her peppers.
3. You need to add 6-10% of your pepper weight, of salt, to the peppers prior to pureeing or mashing. That may seem like a lot of salt (it is), but salt is crucial for keeping your pepper mash safe from mold development, enhancing flavors, reducing bitterness, and providing minerals to the lactic-acid bacteria.
4. Puree the seeded peppers and salt. Be careful – don’t place your face over the container! When you take the lid off, pepper fumes can be intense, burning delicate eye and nose tissue!
5. Scrape the pepper mash into a Pickl-It container.
6. There’s no need to use the Dunk’R.
7. Latch Pickl-It lid into place.
8. Fill airlock with 1 1/2 T water.
9. Place Pickl-It in a dark corner, at room temperature, and cover sides with a towel, to keep UV light out of the ferment.
10. After 5-10 days (5-days if temperature is above 72F, and more if temperature is below 68F), refrigerate the mash, keeping the airlock in place. Change the airlock water on a weekly basis.
11. If, after a few weeks, you see separation – solids rising to the top, and liquid on the bottom – simply stir the two together.
12. If you see a light gray “fuzz” – normal yeast growth – developing on the top layer, simply scrape it free.
13. You can add more pureed peppers and salt to the mash. The already-fermented portion will serve as a “starter” for the new peppers. You may also choose to divide the pepper mash in half, adding new peppers to part of it, while allowing the other half to mature to the point you can eat it! Wait at least 6-months!

How to Measure 6-10% Salt

Always, always, always weigh your salt, resisting the urge to switch to tablespoon or cup measurements. All salt has a different weight depending on the size of its crystal and humidity.

• For 1-pound of peppers use 1-ounce (by weight) of salt = 6%;
• If, after a week, or so, your mash develops surface mold, simply scrape it off and stir an additional 1/2-ounce (by weight) of salt for a total of 10%.
• Exceeding 10% will reduce the efficiency of the lactic-acid bacteria, and potentially hinder their development, so resist the urge to add more salt beyond 10%.
• We prefer unrefined Himalayan Pink Salt, but any high-quality, unrefined sea salt will do. Read here why everyday table salt should not be used during lacto-fermentation.

Pepper History & Use Pepper Nutrition Picking a Pepper to Pickle Grow Your Own Peppers

Garlic and miso are a perfect marriage in this traditional Japanese recipe, given to me by a friend who grew up in Japan. Incredibly easy to make, the most difficult part is having to wait! It needs to “age” (ferment), just like the Pickl-It fermented pepper mash, for at least 3-months, with 1-3 years even better.

Fermented garlic, whether in a brine, or using this miso-method, has the mellow-flavor of baked garlic. Those attributes which often make garlic objectionable – strong odor, flavor, or after-taste – are neutralized. That benefit, all by itself, is enough reason to give this recipe a try. Garlic is an amazing food, considered for centuries as having potential, beneficial health properties, its chemical properties differing depending on whether it is raw, fermented, dehydrated or heated. For a more in-depth look, check out our research area.

Flavor Results Will Depend on Miso

Use any favorite miso, its flavor will infuse the garlic cloves. Our favorite miso is made by South River, fellow-New Englanders who spent time in Japan, studying the inaka tradition of miso-making. There are no short-cuts in their miso-making, and it shows in their final, high-quality product, something which we’ve appreciated in our quest to return to nutrient-dense “slow” foods. While we have bought every flavor of miso South River creates, our favorite for making garlic-miso pickles are their barley, soy or the sweet white which can be purchased directly from South River, sold by the jar or bucket.

Caveat! We’re not affiliated with South River in any way, nor do we financially benefit from recommending them. We’re just very happy customers!

Mirin Adds Another Layer of Flavor Complexity

Mirin, a naturally-fermented sweet-rice cooking wine, is another component in this recipe. While we list it as optional, because it isn’t necessary for the fermenting of the garlic, it does add a rich layer of flavor which we love.

Just like soy sauce, not all Mirin is created equal, so one needs to be cautious in the brand purchased. Look for those that are traditionally fermented using time-honored methods. We like a product by the Sumiya family, some of the last remaining traditional Mirin makers. Their product is “organic” and rich in flavor – Mitoku Organic Mikawa Mirin. Again, as with the miso, we are not affiliated, nor do we financially benefit.

Pickl-It Traditional Miso-Fermented Raw Garlic

This recipe can be double, tripled, quadrupled, only limited by the size of your container. Unlike other lacto-fermented foods, it will not expand, but do leave “head space” between the final layer of miso and the the airlock – at least 1 1/2-inches of room.

• 9 oz fresh organic garlic
• 9 oz miso, organic
• 3-4 Tbsp traditional, organic Mirin (optional)

1. Peel the garlic.
2. Blanche garlic briefly in simmering water – no more than 20-seconds.
3. Pat dry with a clean, kitchen, lint-free towel.
4. Stir together miso and Mirin.
5. Layer miso and single-layers of garlic in a 3/4-liter Pickl-It, beginning and ending with the miso.
6. Gently press the layers as you build them, forcing out excess oxygen which is NOT beneficial to lacto-fermentation.
7. When layers are completed, give your mixture one last gentle press.
8. Latch Pickl-It, fill airlock with 1 1/2 T water.
9. Place cover around Pickl-It shielding mixture from light.
10. Let stand in a cool, dark corner (60-72F) for at least 1 week.
11. Store in refrigerator in summer (or all-year round if your house is heated or is warm).
12. Takes 6-months to properly age the garlic. Won’t reach full flavor for 3-years.

Eat miso-fermented garlic “straight” from the jar, or sliced/smashed, topping off bowls of soup or stew, with or without a spoonful of the equally tasty garlic-infused miso.

Crushed miso-garlic, added to gently-melted butter, is a wonderful way to begin a meal, used as a “dip” for traditional sourdough bread.

When you have cleared a layer of pickled-garlic, use the miso as you would with any other dish or recipe, adding spoonfuls to heated soup or stews, being careful not to cook the miso along with your food, or you’ll kill the living nutrients which make it such a wonderfully healthy, beneficial food.

Fruit, granola and yogurt used to be a favorite quick ‘n easy breakfast I didn’t feel guilty about serving my children, thinking it to be good and nutritious. Then I ran across the wise nutritional-teachings of the Weston A. Price Foundation –

“…it is best to consume a diet as low in phytic acid as possible. In practical terms, this means properly preparing phytate-rich foods to reduce at least a portion of the phytate content, and restricting their consumption to two or three servings per day. Unfermented soy products, extruded whole grain cereals, rice cakes, baked granola, raw muesli and other high-phytate foods should be strictly avoided. Living with Phytic Acid

The grocery-store granola went the way of boxed cereals – into the trash – leaving me with sad-faced children staring at me across the breakfast table. After a few seconds of feeling sorry for himself, my youngest turned the situation around into a positive.

“Wait! I know! You can make our own granola! I know you can do it, Mom!”

Making granola is a breeze with the Pickl-It!

I was already making the butter, ricotta cheese, grinding flour, making sourdough bread, kefir, sauerkraut, old-fashioned cucumber pickles, dehydrating the garden’s harvest the second it turned ripe, making multiple trips a week to local farms, picking up real, grassfed pastured milk, eggs and meat….

I had tried making granola in the past, but I didn’t dare soak it longer than 24-hours, never achieving a good ferment. There were always little surface specks of mold, and the smell was always just a bit “off”.

Making lacto-fermented granola in the Pickl-It results in a fresh-smelling product with a slight sour tang.

With a few simple goals in mind…

• “Properly-prepare” the grains with acidification (Be Kind To Your Grains.)
• No baking!
• Dehydrating!
• Fermentation!

…the result was a light, crispy, flavor-filled granola!

My goal with this recipe was to hear: “WOW, Mom, this is so good! You can’t buy this anywhere!”

I wasn’t disappointed!

Lacto-Fermented Turkish-Fig Coconut Oatmeal Granola
Makes Approximately 7-cups (more if you don’t have family-members sneaking samples out of the dehydrator!)

Combine Dry Ingredients

• 4 cups old-fashioned organic rolled oatmeal
• 1 cup unsweetened organic coconut flakes
• 1 cup finely minced organic Turkish fig (or dates, raisins, or other favorite dried fruit)
• 1 cup finely chopped organic raw pecans (or nut-of-choice)
• 5 grams sea salt
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 1/4 tsp nutmeg

STIR well with a clean, wooden spoon, combining all dry ingredients. For Easier Mixing: Use an 8-cup glass bowl for your dry ingredients, adding the wet ingredients to the dry – stir them together, spooning the combined ingredients into the Pickl-It. (We combined them in the 1 1/2-Pickl-It and then stirred, requiring Rosie the Riveter’s biceps!)

Mix the following wet ingredients together in a separate, 4-cup glass measuring cup:

• 1 cup hot water (about 140-degrees)
• 1 1/4-cup whole-fat grass-fed raw-milk yogurt (or substitute kefir or cultured buttermilk)
• 1/4-cup raw (preferably fermented) honey
• 1/4-cup butter
• 1/4-cup coconut oil

Pour wet ingredients into the dry ingredients; using a wooden spoon, “fold” the ingredients just until moistened.

Time for a 2-day Fermentation!

• Be sure white gasket is attached to underside of Pickl-it lid
• Insert airlock into lid, if it isn’t in place already
• Spoon combined dry & wet ingredients into the Pickl-It if you combined them in another bowl, outside the Pickl-It
• Latch Pickl-It closed
• Fill airlock with 1 1/2 T water
• Wrap a towel or thick cloth (to block light) around the Pickl-It, allowing it to sit at room temperature for two days

Time for dehydration! We recommend dehydrators, instead of ovens, as heat over 145F destroys the living enzymes.

Handle the wet granola batter gently, without packing. This creates tender, flaky granola.

• Use a small ice cream “disher” such as a Norpro 1.5 teaspoon scoop.
• Drop 1/2-inch to 3/4-inch dollops of loosely packed granola onto Teflex sheets, leaving airspace between each mound.
• Dehydrate for an hour at 145F. Excalibur, the manufacturer of my dehydrator has produced good research on the advantage of dehydrating foods at a higher temperature, for the first hour, in order to more quickly increase the the internal temperature, avoiding bacterial and mold development.
• After an hour, break the granola “dollops” in half. Because the outer surface is dry, they’re much easier to handle than when the batter was wet and gooey.
• Reduce the dehydrator temperature to 125F, continue to dry for another hour.
• Gently crumble one last time, further breaking the granola clumps into loose granola mixture. If you like chunkier granola, skip this step.
• In either case, turn the dehydrator down to 95F, until the granola is thoroughly dry.

Store in a wire-bail container to maintain crispy texture.

Variations

Use leftover cooked oatmeal. Replace dry oatmeal called for in this recipe. Reduce the 1-cup hot water to 1/2-cup hot water.

The most popular fruit and third largest food crop in the world is the mango, starring in a wide range of recipes including spicy chutney, tasty desserts (our favorite – Rick Bayless, Upside-Down Spicy Mango Cake) as well as adding a burst-of-flavor to a variety of main-dishes, such as East Indian curries. Besides, how can I NOT love it? It matches our Pickl-It colors!

“So passionate are modern day Asian Indians about their most adored fruit, the cultivated mango, that during mango season in India, families actually argue heatedly about which of the many varieties is best for their favorite mango dishes. For the rest of us, we’re just delighted to welcome mango season, enjoy the luscious tangy fruit that dribbles down our chins, and leave the fisticuffs out of it!” – Haitiwebs eMagazine

Originating in the foothills of Burma and India, the mango is documented in Hindu scripture, 4000 BCE, described as a tiny, fibrous fruit having a turpentine-flavor. Centuries later, we now have over 145 mango varieties from which to choose.

I wasn’t fond of mango on my first, fifth, or even tenth taste. Its exotic aroma, slimy texture, and unfamiliar flavor challenged my taste buds, as well as my olfactory sense, both of which struggled to identify any small degree of familiarity to mango’s complexity. One-moment they had me convinced I was eating an odd off-flavor peach, yet another, pine mixed with citrus rounded out by a hint of wild-berry essence left me with a crinkled nose. So many flavors in one little bite!

Ultimately, it was a mango lassi that won me over, suggested by our waiter as “good for your tummy” after we’d thoroughly enjoyed a spicy Punjabi East Indian dinner. The combination of sour-yogurt and sweet-mango flavors instantly cooled the heat, with the yogurt knocking down some of the super-sweet features of the mango which I didn’t like.

The real surprise was the sense of peace and well-being we felt with each sip of this cooling drink – a deep-tranquility beyond what we normally experience after a well-crafted meal.

Grab a Mango, Not a Turkey Leg

Many years and mangoes later, we discovered why we always felt good after eating mangoes. They are loaded with tryptophan, an important amino acid which is a precursor to 5-HTP, which is a precursor to serotonin.

Anywhere from 80 to 95% of the serotonin (depending on which neurogastroenterology report you read) is created and housed in the gut. It is the “gut” – or what has been recognized as a “second brain” in the digestive tract – that sends serotonin to the brain, and not the other way around.

“The role of the enteric nervous system is to manage every aspect of digestion, from the esophagus to the stomach, small intestine and colon. The second brain, or little brain, accomplishes all that with the same tools as the big brain, a sophisticated nearly self-contained network of neural circuitry, neurotransmitters and proteins.” A Brain in the Head and One in the Gut

Microbially-rich, nutrient-dense foods, like the mango, replenish our “gut” which are “…a little chemistry lab” – described by Dr. Michael Gershon, author of “The Second Brain”, and chairman of the department of anatomy and cell biology at Columbia University.

Lassi – Yogurt or Kefir

Traditional lassi, the “milkshake of India”, are yogurt-based, available in savory or sweet. While the savory versions are as simple as adding a dash of salt, or ground, roasted cumin or coriander seed to yogurt, sweet versions add fruit juices, fruit pulp or rosewater. Modern lassi recipes include as much as a 1/2-cup of sugar for several servings, having more in common with sugar-laden immune-suppressing “smoothie” drinks, then they do with a traditional, functional, probiotic-dense lassi.
While we stay away from processed sugar, we do add pureed fruit to ours, with our favorite being the champagne mango.

We use kefir, (Kêh-feer) instead of yogurt, as it is microbially-richer, especially its bifidobacteria which calm the intestinal tract, reduce inflammation and soothe the nervous system, especially helpful for our youngest who has gut issues, typical of Autism Spectrum Disorders. Like the mango, kefir is also rich in the amino acid trytophan!

“’The reason Kefir is superior to yogurt’, explains writer Giselle Parker, ‘is because Kefir has tons more beneficial bacteria in it. While 500 ml of yogurt contains close to 1.5 trillion organisms, the same amount of Kefir contains a mind-numbing 5 trillion beneficial and friendly bacteria. What this simply means is, a whole lot more friendly bacteria doing lots of good little things to your body that yogurt can’t do.’” – Amazing Kefir

Raw, Unfiltered Honey Increases Bifidobacteria Benefit

“Proverbs 24:13 Eat thou honey, because it is good; and the honeycomb, which is sweet to thy taste.”

Our youngest arrived sugar-addicted, because his foster-family fed him soy-formula and sugar-water for the first 11-months of his life. Sugar has been a no-no in our household, which has helped calm his outbursts, meltdowns and insomnia.

On the other hand? Sugar, at least in the form of raw honey, has served humans well through the centuries. When I ran across research showing the synergistic relation that honey has with cultured milk (kefir) and bifidobacteria, I began adding honey to our mango ferments, as well as the secondary fermentation.

This is certainly worth an experiment. Just be sure you don’t add the honey to the first or primary ferment as there’s some concern that it might harm your kefir grains. If you’re not fond of the flavor (a little more sweet and mild), then simply stick with your normal secondary-fermentation method, adding the honey, to the pureed mango. Then, add that mixture to your kefir, pour and serve.

“Growth and viability of bifidobacteria in fermented milk can be enhanced significantly by the incorporation of FOS and galactooligosaccharides (GOS) in milk prior to fermentation. Honey contains a variety of oligosaccharides varying in their degree of polymerization. The unique composition of honey suggests that it could enhance the growth, activity and viability of bifidobacteria in milk and thus, fermented dairy products.” – Z. Ustunol, Ph.D, Michigan State University

Our Mango Kefir Lassi – with or without honey added to the secondary fermentation – have helped soothe the raging gut-issues experienced by our youngest who had gut issues common to Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). We’ve also all benefited (including the dog!) with a better night’s sleep when we drink a 6-ounce Mango Kefir Lassi about an hour before bedtime.

Mango Kefir Lassi

• 1 1/2-Liter Pickl-It Kefir
• 4-T raw, unfiltered honey – liquid, creamed or fermented
• 1 large or 2 medium pureed mango
• dash sea salt

Instructions for Secondary Fermentation with Honey

1. Separate kefir grains from the 24-hour fermented raw-milk, using whatever method works best for you (strain or remove them with a spoon)
2. Add strained kefir milk back into the Pickl-It (or keep it in the Pickl-It if you removed the grains with a spoon, which is our preferred method)
3. Add a few tablespoons of kefir milk to a small glass dish, then add honey; stir until the honey is thinned; add the kefir-thinned honey into the Pickl-It, stirring to incorporate
4. Close the cover of the Pick-It; store this secondary-fermentation in the refrigerator for another 12-24 hours;
5. When ready to serve mango lassi, puree mango with a dash of sea salt.
6. Fill glasses with honey-kefir mixture, then float 2-T mango puree on top the kefir
7. Serve with a spoon so each person may stir the mango into the kefir, or spoon it out
8. Makes enough for 4 6-ounce glasses (with leftovers for more) or 5 6-ounce glasses

Instructions for Regular Secondary (Honey-Free) Fermentation

1. Separate kefir grains from the 24-hour kefir-grain fermented raw-milk, using whatever method works best for you (strain or remove them with a spoon)
2. Add strained kefir milk back into the Pickl-It (or keep it in the Pickl-It if you removed the grains with a spoon, which is our preferred method)
3. Close the cover of the Pick-It; store this secondary-fermentation in the refrigerator for another 12-24 hours;
4. When ready to serve mango lassi, puree mango with honey, adding a dash of sea salt.
5. Fill glasses with honey-kefir mixture, then float 2-T mango puree on top the kefir;
6. Serve with a spoon so each person may stir the mango into the kefir, or spoon it out
7. Alternatively, stir the pureed honey-mango into the kefir and serve.

Makes enough for 4 6-ounce glasses (with leftovers for more) or 5 6-ounce glasses

(Photo Note: Ignore this as having any meaning to what the final drink should look like. We were caught up in-the-moment, playing with kefir and pureed mango and the color of mango is SO MUCH easier to photograph than white kefir. Yours should be the opposite: kefir on the bottom, mango floating on the top. It will be just as pretty, but not as easy to photograph.)

Neuroscience for Kids – Olfactory Senses

Sleep Better Tips – Foods Rich in Tryptophan

The Effect of Honey on Bifidobacteria

The Benefits of Kefir

The first major crop of the season, which goes straight from the garden into our Pickl-It, is one of my favorites – the fragrant and spicy garlic scape.

It was the most surprising “new”, unfamiliar food – the flower stalk of hardneck garlic, harvested from the plant before the yellow (edible!) bloom opens – showing up in the harvest-bins at our CSA during our first year of membership.

Standing and puzzling over its odd curly-shape, and tightly-closed flower, I found I wasn’t alone. “Perhaps”, another inquisitive CSA-member speculated, “its intended use is meant for a floral arrangement.”

“The garlic scape serves as the stem from which the seed head of the garlic bulb is formed. As the bulb begins to grow and mature, garlic stalks also begin to lengthen. During the growth period, the garlic scape begins to curve. Contained within the garlic scape is a great deal of flavor, although the stalk never does reach the level of the pungent garlic bulb itself. Initially, the garlic scape is relatively tender, making it ideal for use as an ingredient in several dishes.” Wise Geek

Fortunately for us, an amused CSA farmer explained that garlic scape are high in Vitamin C and calcium, along with being extremely versatile:

• Stand-alone vegetable sautéed-in-butter,
• Finely diced, added to soups and stews,
• Blanched, pureed, added to vinegar, oil or cream,
• Substitute for garlic in pesto

The important description from the Wise Geek excerpt is: “Initially, the garlic scape is relatively tender”. If you or your farmer wait too long, all you’ll end up with is a stem as woody and difficult to eat as any tree. But catch it at the perfect moment-in time? Tender. Juicy. Flavorful.

I had to wonder, how many times in my life I’d passed by garlic scape at a farmer’s markets, or Whole Paycheck, never knowing what I was missing. It was one of those things, that when I finally saw and comprehend what I was looking at, it popped up everywhere – on television cooking shows, in magazines and food blogs.

We even went away from a long weekend, eating our way across one segment of the “Vermont Cheese Trail, and there it was – garlic scape! – showcased in a small cheese shop. They’d lightly folded the finely-minced scape into a lovely mound of fresh goat cheese, topped with a chiffonade of the scape’s flower.

That was the deciding moment when my husband and I said, “Pick-It! We have to ferment our own scape!” A simple 3.6% brine, 1-1/2-liter Pick-It, one a handful of scape fronds cut into 2-inch pieces, and a week later?

Putting our best knife-skills to use, we finely-minced our own pickled scape, adding it to an assortment of food. And unlike the gourmet store’s dead-nutrient distilled-vinegar preserved scape, our Pick-It scape had a “clean” flavor. Naturally-preserved with lactic acid, Pickl-It scape lasts, refrigerated, from harvest-to-harvest, without suffering flavor or texture loss due to oxygen exposure.

Garlic Flower

The tightly-closed flower on the end of the scape isn’t a “flower”, but instead a miniature garlic clove – a bubils – that leaches energy from the plant. When it appears, just like other plants such as chives, it signals “bolting”. No matter its name – “bubils” (keep that one handy for Scrabble) or “flower” – it is delicious served pickled, gently sauteed in butter, or raw. When raw, a chiffonade cut exposes more flavor, adding a gentle zest to salads, or tossed on a simple soufflé.

When pickling the “flower”, which should be lacto-fermented along with the fronds, the flower should be eaten within a few weeks. Their more delicate texture breaks down more quickly in the lactic-acid brine.

Last but not least, the scape brine is loaded with flavor, useful for splashing on finishing touches to eggs, salads, bean dips, soups or stews.

While 6-ounces of the commercially-produced pickled scape retailed for $9, raw garlic scape – about a dozen flower stalks – usually sell for around $2 at local farmer’s markets. Cut into 2-inch pieces, that’s enough to fill a 1 1/2-liter Pickl-It – more or less the equivalent of 8 or 9 jars of the ready-made!

Lacto-fermented Garlic Scape Recipe

• 2% brine formula = 8 cups filtered, non-chlorine, non-fluoride water plus 38 grams salt
• 18-36 garlic scape fronds/flower stalks

1. Mix the salt into the water, stir well; set aside
2. Make sure the “flower” is tightly-sealed if you intend to “pickle” it
3. Give fronds/stalks a quick rinse, cutting off woody, fibrous bottom (if any); in general, fronds/stalks should be thin and easily pierced with a knife tip
4. Cut fronds/stalks into 2-inch segments
5. Leave about 1 to 2-inches of the stalk on the “flower”
6. Place all scape frond/stalk segments and flowers in the Pick-It
7. Cover scape with brine; garlic scape and brine should not extend above the Pick-It “shoulder”; place Dunk’R on top to hold scape under brine
8. Latch the Pick-It cover; place 1 1/2-tablespoons water in the airlock, and leave the Pickl-It at room temperature, in a dark corner on your kitchen counter. Wrap a towel around the Pickl-It jar, but do not cover the airlock.
9. Check the brine flavor after 3 days (5 days if temperatures are under 68F); there should be a pleasant light-sour garlic taste. If you desire a stronger flavor, leave on the counter for another 2-3 days. When complete, store in the refrigerator, or in a root cellar that does not exceed 55F.

We always have lacto-fermented carrots on hand. They’re wonderful added to a fresh garden salad, or, with the addition of yogurt, touch of honey, and drizzle of orange juice, they’re a new “fast food!”, turned into their very own side-salad!

Pickl-It Dilled Carrots

1 1/2 lbs grated organic carrots (don’t peel!)
3 heads dill or 1 T packed fresh dill weed
2% brine (19 grams Himalayan Pink fine-grind)
4 cups water
1 1/2 T water for airlock

1. Load the 1-liter Pickl-It with grated carrots and dill
2. Pack carrots to remove air pockets
3. Dissolve salt in water; pour over carrots until brine-height reaches the “shoulder”.
4. Place lettuce, kale, chard, or cabbage leaf on top the shredded carrots,
5. Place Dunk’R on top of chosen leaf material; insert flat-end of French rolling pin or wooden spoon into Dunk’R to press carrots/leaf, expressing oxygen
6. Brine should extend 1-inch above carrots
7. Snap the Pickl-It lid closed.
8. Install airlock in lid (if it isn’t already in place), and add approximately 1 1/2 T water to the airlock, snapping on airlock plastic cover
9. Place Pickl-It in a dark corner of the counter – for 3 to 5 days – drape towel around Pickl-It, but not over airlock, blocking light
10. Ideal fermenting temperature is 72°F; if warmer, fermentation may occur in 3 days; if cooler, up to 7 days
11. Remove the airlock and insert the Pickl-It Plug’R for refrigerator storage.

Ideal fermenting temperature is 68°F-72°F; if warmer, fermentation may occur in 3 days; if cooler, up to 7 days.

For some interesting facts about lacto-fermented carrots, read here

I am a recipe tweaker, seldom creating the same dinner entrée twice. A little extra spice here, a different protein there, turns the same-old recipe into a new creation.

Thankfully, my family has an adventurous spirit towards food, our youngest child dubbing me his“personal Iron Chef”. His acceptance of all-things-food didn’t come easily because of his “self-limiting” behaviors, preferring high-carb foods.

Authentic, barrel-cured dill-pickles, bought at a local butcher-shop, were key to turning off his carb-cravings. At $2.75 per pickle, though, I was motivated to master the art of creating naturally-cured cucumber pickles!

My goal was to re-create a my grandmother’s kosher dill recipe which she learned from her mother, who learned from her mother, who learned from her mother – eight generations back in time.

My mother’s generation opted out, thinking distilled-vinegar embalmed, dead-nutrient, pasteurized pickles were a good trade-off, and discouraged me from “wasting my time learning “the old-country-ways”.

While I lacked hands-on knowledge, I did have a well-developed taste-memory of what made Grandma’s cucumber pickles special – heads of dill, garlic, onions, mustard seed, bay leaves, peppercorns and clove. Lacking my grandmother’s tools – a root cellar and large covered crocks – I used glass canning jars with screw-on two-part and plastic lids, tightening them as much as possible as recommended by Sally Fallon and Dr. Mary Enig in a Weston A. Price Foundation article –

“Lacto-fermentation is an anaerobic process and the presence of oxygen, once fermentation has begun, will ruin the final product.“ Lacto-Fermentation article

The best thing that could be said about the early batches of half-sour dills, was said by my husband: “Love the brine, Honey! I think you’ve got great flavors going!”

White Streaks, White Spots, Yeast and Mold

The pickles, on the other hand, had some problems. One small trick I picked up from my grandmother was that slicing a pickle in half could tell you an awful lot about whether the pickles were properly fermented.

If they were uniformly-colored – a nice even-green from one end to the other – they were “done”. Unevenly-colored flesh, with white streaks or white spots, meant more fermentation time was needed. Even after several weeks, many of mine still had white streaks, while others had large air pockets, yet another sign of poor fermentation.

One batch swelled more than the others – a natural part of fermenting – pushing the brine up and out the sides of the lids. That was proof that we didn’t have a tight enough seal: if liquid could get out, oxygen was able to get in.

That explained why I was battling kham – a waxy, harmless, oxygen-fed yeast described as “pancakes” that floats on top the brine. It also explained the slow fermentation, as well as mushy pickles and even the development of oxygen-loving mold.

Next, we switched to wire-bail jars, but that meant “burping” them every few hours to release the carbon dioxide that built up. That was not only tedious, but it was obvious that oxygen rushed into the fermenting vessel – the very thing we were trying to avoid!

First-time Pickl-It Success!

Merging wine-making airlocks with our wire-bail jars, as well as having an expensive food-grade grommet created – important for creating a super-tight seal – was key to our Pickl-It kosher-pickle success.

Unlike the screw-top canning jars, the Pickl-It pickles were evenly fermented in less than two weeks, developed no mold, and were clean, crisp and “fresh” tasting.

Many Hands Make Light Work

Best of all, Pickl-It is easy enough for my children to learn about lacto-fermentation, right along with me. Creating cultured-foods with the screw-on lid/canning jar system was tedious, needing monitoring – not exactly child-friendly to use – but the Pickl-It takes away the fuss. Tasks for little (or big) hands that are fun for working together, include –

• Collecting leaves (Helpful articles: Oak Leaf Experiments, Year-Old Crispy Pickle,) Oak Leaf Tannins, Grape Leaves for Crispy Pickles)
• Counting or measuring out whole spices (great for reinforcing math-skills for younger children)
• Scrubbing sand and/or blossoms from the cucumber, using a vegetable brush
• Stirring the brine, dissolving the sea salt
• Loading the spices and cukes into the Pickl-It fermenting container

The sense of accomplishment that my children have, when involved in the fermenting process from beginning-to-end, is evident when they announce, “That’s the one I helped create!” Each little hands-on experience adds up to a lifetime of developing good eating habits, which I hope they’ll pass along recipes, like the Pickl-It pickles to future generations.

Long-version Kosher Dill Pickle recipe
Short-version Kosher Dill Pickle recipe
Open Crocks are a Crock – Reviews why modern open-bowl, open-crock lacto-fermentation techniques are not traditional.
Simple Brine Recipe
Pickl-It versus Harsch Crock – Pickl-It wins by a landslide!

I recently read a blog speculating that Kosher Dill Pickles were made in the kitchens of Jewish women. Oy!

“Kosher,” in this case, doesn’t refer to Jewish dietary laws – “kashrut” – or to a specific group of people, but instead, indicates the use of kosher salt used to make the fermentation brine for “pickling”. “Kosher pickles” also means the inclusion of raw garlic cloves in the pickling brine. No garlic cloves? No kosher!

“Scientifically, a pickle is any perishable ingredient that has been preserved in a brine. Our ancestors – no matter what part of the globe they hailed from – pickled to preserve fruits, vegetables, meat, and fish. They pickled to save money. They pickled, together with family and friends, to assure safety and make the most out of their foods….” New York Food Museum

When families throughout time worked together “pickling”, they used anaerobic fermentation and not the new-fangled high-heat modern canning methods, mistaken as being an “old-fashioned” food-preservation method. Unlike vats of boiling water and blistering-hot glass jars, anaerobic fermentation is child-friendly, great for teaching little-hands life-long healthy-food practices.

I’d much rather create fermented foods with my children, than struggle through the aisles of a grocery store with them in tow, trying to discern which boxed or canned food is less toxic than the others. Whittlling away the clutter of our modern-age has simplified our life – brought the “real living” back into our family on many levels.

This is a Foundational Recipe Useful for Creating Other Brine-Preserved Vegetables

This recipe creates a zesty, crispy pickle loved by all, as well as teaching basic lacto-fermentation skills, easily applied to a creating other vegetable-based fermented foods. Pickled broccoli, green beans, red peppers, pearl onions, garlic scape, and garlic cloves are just a few of the many we’ve created.

Start by making one, or all of the fermented-pickle variations in Section #2. Learning to adjust your spices and salt levels will give you confidence to use the same technique for pickling other vegetables. This is the ultimate, “Play with your food!”

Let’s get started!

I’ve laid out 6 quick-decision steps, which are followed by a step-by-step recipe. At the very end is a recipe for one of my favorite pickling-spice recipes which I use for so much more than Kosher Dill Pickles. I even use it to make our favorite Greek-style beef stew, Stifatho, as well as seasoning Pickl-It corned beef. But for right now, back to pickles!

If you are a pickling-pro and anxious to get going – “just give me the recipe, please” – you may either scroll down or leap on over to the short-version.

There’s Only One Nutrient-Dense Pickle Choice

We moderns have been heavily influenced by the new kid on the block – factory-food. More times than not, we innocently copy them embalming our food in distilled vinegar, or fooling ourselves into thinking 24-hour refrigerator pickles are the same as traditionally-cured.

If your goal is provide the best possible nutrition to your family, there is only one appropriate method for creating nutrient-dense, easily-digestible, natural probiotic-rich food = real food.

• Fermentation: You’re correct if you guessed this was the “nutrient-dense”, probiotic-version! Classified as a “living, raw food” lacto-fermented (cultured, brine, cured, fermented, and occasionally called “processed”, etc.) lasts up to two years if refrigerated or stored in a refrigerator-cold root cellar in an oxygen-free container.
• Fresh pack/quick process: This is the bottled, commercial processed pickle utilizing distilled vinegar and pasteurization, resulting in dead nutrients; shelf life: 18-months
• Refrigerated or “fresh” pickles: These are typically eaten the same day, or within a week, requiring a combination of refrigeration and acidification using vinegar or alcohol to kill the bacteria that could cause spoilage (also kills good bacteria); shortest lifespan of all the pickles, typically about 1-2 weeks. This is a “side-salad” method and has nothing to do with long-term food-preservation.

Fermented Dill Pickles are Universally the #1 Favorite

The most popular pickled cucumber throughout the centuries has been the lacto-fermented (anaerobic) dill pickle, which originated in China. Porous clay jars were packed with pickling cukes, brine and dill, then tightly-sealed and stacked in cold caves or buried in deep-earth fermentation pits, providing the lactic-acid bacteria with cool, evenly-regulated temperatures.

There are three basic “Fermented Dill Pickles” from which to choose. Make one or one Pickl-It of each!

• Genuine Dills – Original Chinese pickle to which dill was added during the last stage of fermentation; dill is antimicrobial and may interfere with early fermentation stages; their flavor is more concentrated and sour than other pickles; refrigerate for long-term storage;
• Kosher Dills – Identical to “Genuine Dills”, with addition of garlic added at the last stage of fermentation; garlic is antimicrobial and may interfere with fermentation in the early stages; refrigerate for long-term storage
• Sour/Half-Sour: Fermented for 2-4 days, half-sours do not contain dill, garlic, spices or herbs as their full-flavor is meant to be intense pickled cucumber; half-sours are refrigerated before they’re fully fermented; refrigeration slows down the microbial process, creating a stronger sour flavor. Typically, these use a lower-salt, 3.6% lower-salt brine.

Pick-A-Salt and Pick-A-Brine

Our ancestors had two choices for their brine. Those who were land-locked used rock salt. Those living along coastal waters were an ocean-walk away from instant ocean-water brine.

There are some Japanese lacto-fermented foods which still utilize ocean-brine, but because of coastal pollution, they’re forced to harvest deep-ocean water.

I’ve experimented over the years with many salts including kosher, Celtic Gray Sea Salt, Real Salt from Redmond, Utah, as well as a number of local hand-harvested New England brands which are additive-free.

I prefer Himalayan Pink Salt which has a rich, complex flavor, 30+ more minerals than other salts, and is a deep-earth salt, not exposed to coastal pollution which is a growing problem in many regions.

Genuine Dills and Kosher Dills typically use a 5.4% brine while the Half Sour Dills, as mentioned, use a 3.6% lower-salt brine.

Pickl-It tends to need less salt because of the ability for lactic-acid bacteria to quickly create carbon dioxide which pushes the oxygen out, reducing the ability for oxygen-hungry mold and yeast to develop. The 3.6% lower-salt brine is a good choice for all three types of dill pickles.

If, on the rare occasion (we have never had it happen in the Pickl-It), mold should develop (cucumber pickles are notorious for mold spores) you can always adjust your brine, adding more salt at any stage of the fermentation.

Adding Other Spices & Herbs To Your Brine

Crunchy and zesty is our goal when fermenting pickling-cukes. We’ll discuss “crunchy” in a bit. Right now, we’ll focus on “zesty”.

It’s fun to play with WHOLE spices and WHOLE herbs in the Pickl-It. We have encountered a huge reduction in mold issues which we attribute to the anaerobic environment created by the Pickl-It positive-seal. Whole spices are known to carry mold spores. When you create a healthy fermenting environment, blocking out oxygen which feeds mold spores, the spores are neutralized in the brine.

Please, do not use powdered spices or ground herbs, as they cloud up the brine, turn to sludge on the bottom, and do not taste or work as well as whole products.

We love, love, love garlic cloves, dill and more dill, but there are also some other spices and herbs we couldn’t do without, including:

• whole yellow mustard – traditional and foundational to all good pickles!
• black, pink, white (or a combination) peppercorns
• bay leaves
• cardamom seed (removed from pod)
• whole cloves
• whole dried red hot peppers
• whole allspice berry
• whole, 3-inch cinnamon sticks.

I make my own spice blend which is more economical, and easily tailored for our taste preferences. My spice blend recipe is at the bottom of this blog entry.

IMPORTANT: Use Only Pickling Cukes

I’ve generously, repetitiously used the term “pickling cukes” throughout this blog, wanting to drive home the point that no other cucumber will do.

For creating a traditional, long-store cucumber pickle with the best results, use ONLY “pickling cukes”, such as Kirby, make real pickles. Kirby cucumbers are short, squat, prickly, thick-skinned, dense-flesh – very different from English cucumbers which are thin-skinned, watery, break down too easily into mush and are just too large.

Crispy is as Important as Zesty!

“If a soggy, mushy, sweet pickle is served to you under the guise of being a kosher pickle, you should immediately complain, because while it may be pickled, it most certainly does not deserve to be called a kosher pickle.”

Two things help with creating crispy pickling cukes:

• Pickl-It anaerobic environment which doesn’t feed yeast-loving oxygen that create mushy pickles
• Adding tannin-rich grape leaves, white oak leaves, raspberry or horseradish leaves – all of which are traditional technique!

Kosher Dill Pickles Made Easy!

DIRECTIONS

Container size: 3-liter Pickl-It (or use two 1 1/2-liter Pickl-It or three 1-liter Pickl-It containers)
Brine: 6 T high-quality sea salt, stirred-to-dissolve in 8-cups filtered, non-chlorine, non-fluoridated water (simple brine recipes

Ingredients

• 3-4 pounds small, unwaxed Kirby-style pickling cukes, preferably no wider than 1 1/2-inche; try to select ones that are uniform in size
• 2 heads garlic, peeled
• 4-5 heads flowering dill
• 1-cup blanched pearl onions (cut “X” in root end with sharp knife, blanch for 1-minute; rinse under cold water, “pop” onion through “X” removing from outer skin)
• 2-T organic pickling spice blend (purchased or home-made, recipe follows)
• 5-6 medium organic grape leaves

Directions

1. Remove lid from the Pickl-It container for easier filling
2. Insert airlock into Pickl-It lid; set aside
3. Make sure all traces of the cucumber blossoms are removed; scrub all debris, sand from pickling cukes
4. Pack and alternate pickling cukes, pearl onions (if you’re using them!) and whole-spices into the Pickl-It; rows and layers work best, rather than just randomly dumping them into the jar; this reduces oxygen space and is more efficient.
5. Note: Add garlic cloves and dill heads on the day the Pickl-It cukes are moved to the fridge. And yes, keep the airlock on for at least 3 months!
6. Do not load the cukes any higher than the jar “shoulder”
7. Place Pickl-It Dunk’R on top the pickling cukes, holding them under the brine. Hint for using carrot strips under Dunk’R to hold pickles down.
8. Install Pickl-It lid on Pickl-It jar
9. Fill airlock with 1 1/2 T water
10. Place Pickl-It in dark corner of counter, its sides covered with a towel
11. After 24-hours, you should notice small carbon dioxide bubbles throughout the brine – this is normal, a sign of good, healthy fermentation. A “froth” or “foam” will accumulated on top the brine. Ignore it. Unlike other methods of “fermentation” that allow oxygen into the jar, Pickl-It locks the oxygen out. The “foam” or “scum” in the Pickl-It isn’t loaded with mold or oxygen-fed yeast. It is simply the result of a good batch of CO2 – carbon dioxide – which shows you’ve got a great batch of pickles.
12. If your room temperature is between 68-74F, leave the Pickl-It container on the counter for 5-7 days, then add garlic and dill.
13. Move the Pickl-It to the refrigerator for 20-days.
14. Remove one pickle and slice in half. If there is a uniform green color throughout the pickle’s interior, without white spots or streaks, your Kosher Dill Pickles are ready to eat!
15. If you have white spots or white streaks, return the re-latched Pickl-It to the refrigerator for another 7-days. Check progress again, and continue to repeat until there is even coloration. Enjoy!

Pickl-It Pickling Spice Blend

• 1 cup mustard seeds
• 3/4 cup coriander
• 1/2 cup whole allspice
• 1/2 cup black or mixed peppercorns
• 1/2 cup 3-inch cinnamon sticks
• 1/2 cup dill seeds
• 1/2 cup mace
• 1/4 cup cardamom seeds
• 1/4 cup whole cloves
• 10 bay leaves
• 6 (dried) hot peppers
• 4 1-inch pieces dried ginger (optional)

1. Stir all ingredients in a glass jar, preferably wire-bail
2. Store up to 12-months – or longer. We’ve had batches remain crispy and flavorful for 18-months. But we make and store all our ferments in the Pickl-It. Moving Pickl-It food into a mason jar, or into a plain wire-bail jar, greatly reduces their life and probiotic value due to oxygen exposure.

Nutritional Benefits of Dill Botanical Description of Dill New York Food Museum Long-version Kosher Dill Pickle recipe Open Crocks are a Crock – Reviews why modern open-bowl, open-crock lacto-fermentation techniques are not traditional. Recreating Grandma’s Kosher Dill Pickles Simple Brine Recipe Pickl-It versus Harsch Crock – Pickl-It wins by a landslide!

If you want the long version with more details, facts, and help with the decision-making process, now is the time to jump on over to our long-version Kosher Dill Pickle recipe which gives you all that and more.

For those pickle-pros who know all the ins and outs of lacto-fermentation and “just want the recipe, please!”, here ya go! Keep reading…

The recipe that follows is the same, whether you read the long or short version. It doesn’t hold back on flavor – two heads of raw garlic cloves, dill weed, flowering dill heads, and a variety of our favorite pickling spices detailed in our pickling spice recipe, following the recipe.

In typical style, we’ve created this recipe to follow traditional methods. Instead of adding all the ingredients in at the beginning of the fermentation process, we’ve followed traditional wisdom that withholds the garlic and dill – they’re bacteriostatic – and instead, add them a few days into the fermentation process.

This technique gives the lactic-acid bacteria a good chance in the Pickl-It anaerobic environment to grow strong, generating a generous dose of carbon dioxide, dropping the brine’s pH and accumulating a healthy-dose of lactic-acid. That takes several days. We usually wait until it is time to move the Pickl-It into the refrigerator. The cold will slow the fermentation down, but it will not stop it, contrary to modern myths. Cold-storage allows for a wide-range of flavor development – the perfect time to add garlic and dill, their flavorful and healthy oils extracted by the powerful lactic acid.

Kosher Dill Pickles Made Easy!

DIRECTIONS

Container size: 3-liter Pickl-It (or use two 1 1/2-liter Pickl-It or three 1-liter Pickl-It containers)
Brine: 6 T high-quality sea salt, stirred-to-dissolve in 8-cups filtered, non-chlorine, non-fluoridated water (simple brine recipes

Ingredients

• 3-4 pounds small, unwaxed Kirby-style pickling cukes, preferably no wider than 1 1/2-inche; try to select ones that are uniform in size
• 2 heads garlic, peeled
• 4-5 heads flowering dill
• 1-cup blanched pearl onions (cut “X” in root end with sharp knife, blanch for 1-minute; rinse under cold water, “pop” onion through “X” removing from outer skin)
• 2-T organic pickling spice blend (purchased or home-made, recipe follows)
• 5-6 medium organic grape leaves

Directions

1. Remove lid from the Pickl-It container for easier filling
2. Insert airlock into Pickl-It lid; set aside
3. Make sure all traces of the cucumber blossoms are removed; scrub all debris, sand from pickling cukes
4. Pack and alternate pickling cukes, pearl onions (if you’re using them!) and whole-spices into the Pickl-It; rows and layers work best, rather than just randomly dumping them into the jar; this reduces oxygen space and is more efficient.
5. Note: Add garlic cloves and dill heads on the day the Pickl-It cukes are moved to the fridge. And yes, keep the airlock on for at least 3 months!
6. Do not load the cukes any higher than the jar “shoulder”
7. Place Pickl-It Dunk’R on top the pickling cukes, holding them under the brine. Hint for using carrot strips under Dunk’R to hold pickles down.
8. Install Pickl-It lid on Pickl-It jar
9. Fill airlock with 1 1/2 T water
10. Place Pickl-It in dark corner of counter, its sides covered with a towel
11. After 24-hours, you should notice small carbon dioxide bubbles throughout the brine – this is normal, a sign of good, healthy fermentation. A “froth” or “foam” will accumulated on top the brine. Ignore it. Unlike other methods of “fermentation” that allow oxygen into the jar, Pickl-It locks the oxygen out. The “foam” or “scum” in the Pickl-It isn’t loaded with mold or oxygen-fed yeast. It is simply the result of a good batch of CO2 – carbon dioxide – which shows you’ve got a great batch of pickles.
12. If your room temperature is between 68-74F, leave the Pickl-It container on the counter for 5-7 days, then add garlic and dill.
13. Move the Pickl-It to the refrigerator for 20-days.
14. Remove one pickle and slice in half. If there is a uniform green color throughout the pickle’s interior, without white spots or streaks, your Kosher Dill Pickles are ready to eat!
15. If you have white spots or white streaks, return the re-latched Pickl-It to the refrigerator for another 7-days. Check progress again, and continue to repeat until there is even coloration. Enjoy!

Pickl-It Pickling Spice Blend

• 1 cup mustard seeds
• 3/4 cup coriander
• 1/2 cup whole allspice
• 1/2 cup black or mixed peppercorns
• 1/2 cup 3-inch cinnamon sticks
• 1/2 cup dill seeds
• 1/2 cup mace
• 1/4 cup cardamom seeds
• 1/4 cup whole cloves
• 10 bay leaves
• 6 (dried) hot peppers
• 4 1-inch pieces dried ginger (optional)

1. Stir all ingredients in a glass jar, preferably wire-bail
2. Store up to 12-months – or longer. We’ve had batches remain crispy and flavorful for 18-months. But we make and store all our ferments in the Pickl-It. Moving Pickl-It food into a mason jar, or into a plain wire-bail jar, greatly reduces their life and probiotic value due to oxygen exposure.

Nutritional Benefits of Dill Botanical Description of Dill New York Food Museum Long-version Kosher Dill Pickle recipe Open Crocks are a Crock – Reviews why modern open-bowl, open-crock lacto-fermentation techniques are not traditional. Recreating Grandma’s Kosher Dill Pickles Simple Brine Recipe Pickl-It versus Harsch Crock – Pickl-It wins by a landslide!

I don’t have 1,000 years to wait for authentic Chinese-pickled eggs (and they’ve never sounded that good to me), so instead, I got creative, making what my children said, were “the best pickles ever!”

Filling a 3/4-liter Pick-It with brine from our pickled beets, we plopped in 8 hard-cooked along with thoroughly-cooled and peeled, farm-fresh eggs. Three days later? The cinnamon, cloves, and allspice spiced-brine, and beautifully-colored beet brine, permeated the egg whites.

The brine is loaded with nutrition as well as being a natural probiotic, infusing the eggs with nutrition.

Simple Brine-Cured Hard-Cooked Eggs

• 3/4-Liter Pickl-It
• 6-8 hard-cooked, peeled, cold farm-fresh eggs
• 2 3-inch stick cinnamon
• 6 whole cloves
• 2 whole allspice berries
• Pickl-It lacto-fermented beet brine

1. Load Pickl-It with peeled, cold eggs
2. Add spices
3. Pour in brine, completely covering
4. Latch Pickl-It lid; add airlock (eggs will give off gas, so if you use a Plug’R, it will “blow” the plug out the lid); fill airlock with 1 1/2 T water
5. Refrigerate for 3-days and then devour!

“Garlic used as it should be used is the soul, the divine essence, of cookery. The cook who can employ it successfully will be found to possess the delicacy of perception, the accuracy of judgment, and the dexterity of hand which go to the formation of a great artist.” – Mrs. W. G. Waters, ‘The Cook’s Decameron,’ 1920

When I began cooking meals, around the age of 12, my food-experiments were pretty safe, held-in-check by two constraints: a limited selection of bland, tin-can ground spices, and the minimalist recipes in our one and only cookbook, a red-covered Betty Crocker. I couldn’t get in too much trouble, because its recipes seldom called for more than one spice, beyond the omnipresent salt and pepper.

I don’t recall any of its recipes requesting whole-spices, other than a holiday clove-spiked ham, side-lined for “those more experienced”. That would be the women in my family who owned more than one cookbook, making them the true cooking authorities. They pretty much all felt the same way about whole spices: “too much work”, “too much money”, or “not as easy to use”.

During college, and later in marriage, my husband and I were drawn to “ethnic” foods, eschewing the salt and pepper of our childhood for more bold and spicy flavors – Thai, Moroccan, East Indian, Ethiopian, Burmese and Malaysian cuisine – which demanded the inclusion of roasted and ground whole-spices. Heretics! Our food-choices were an enigma to all who had thought they’d known us.

Good Intentions, Gone Bad

During a wee-bit too-spicy dinner, we watched, wide-eyed, as both sets of parents gulped glasses of ice-water, profusely apologizing to each other for the dinner my husband and I had made. Acting as if we weren’t even physically present at the same table, they “set the record straight” that not a single one of them had raised us “to be this way”.

Our downfall, which caused everyone pain, was the fresh garlic. It was a wild element which we needed to tame, nothing at all like the bland, brown-powder (it should be white – brown is oxidized) of our childhood.

Lacto-fermentation = Ancient Convenience Foods!

We fast-tracked our garlic-education, eating our way through several years of the Gilroy Garlic Festival, where we fell madly in love with pickled-garlic, garlic ice cream, garlic-stuffed olives, aioli, garlic paste, marinaras, and pestos, opening up a whole new world of eating.

We made a habit of eating at the The Stinking Rose in San Francisco, where we learned to appreciate the amazing flavors of whole garlic cloves, gently pan-roasted in butter – an amazing combination spread on San Francisco sourdough bread.

We ate bowls of Scoma’s cioppino trying to crack their real recipe which was heady with aromatic garlic, thrilled when they provided their amazing recipe, at their website.

We discovered there was more than one type of garlic!

• Softneck – most common grocery store variety, covered in white paper; commercial large-scale production, harder to peel, stronger flavor because it contains more allicin, longer shelf life; good for pickling, dehydrating and curing (hanging to dry); lasts for months; some are also purple in color, so can’t tell softneck by the color – be sure to confirm variety/type with grower, if possible

• Hardneck – chef’s love this; doesn’t have the harsh “raw” bite of the softneck due to less allicin, has more of the “garlic” flavor without the pain; easier to peel; grown by local growers more than huge commercial ventures; deteriorates very quickly so is best for immediate culinary use; when stored raw, withers away quickly within 3-5 weeks; for long-term storage, slice and dehydrate or ferment; color variation ranges from purple, purple striped, red, red-striped and white; maybe confused with some softneck so be sure to check variety/type with grower

Experiment #1 – Pickl-It Garlic

Determined to re-create both the pickled and butter-roasted garlic cloves, we filled a 1 1/2-liter Pickl-It with several pounds of peeled, softneck, garlic cloves along with a 3.5% brine.

Thinking that would be enough to last until the next growing season, we used every single Pickl-It pickled clove by Christmas.

They’d only lasted four months because we’d eaten every single clove, setting a record for garlic consumption!

The naturally-fermented garlic cloves had been incredibly convenient to use, but also had a more pleasing flavor than the commercially-pickled cloves of our past.

Unlike the commercially-pickled cloves which had a harsh, bitter flavor from distilled vinegar, our Pickl-It naturally-fermented cloves had a smooth “tang” without the vinegar after-burn and the mellow flavor of baked garlic.

We had added them to every meal – not a bad thing given their possible health benefits – appreciating their added dimension of flavor to our breakfast soufflés, omelets, and egg and bacon or sausage skillets.

We increased our garlic-bread consumption.

The Pickl-It garlic cloves were remarkably identical to “The Stinking Rose” butter-roasted cloves – a sweet, mellow, no-odor profile just like whole baked heads. Gently melting our home-made, pastured, grass-fed butter, and adding a handful of smashed garlic cloves, made some of the most super-easy, super-tasty garlic bread we’d ever had.

I also discovered that some little (and big hands) were raiding the Pickl-It garlic container, snacking on them several times a week. Naturally-picked, probiotic-rich garlic cloves, which also doubled for baked garlic and snacks?!

We had a major hit on our hands!

We regularly pickle (naturally-ferment) 10 to 12 pounds of softneck garlic cloves, depending on their size and availability, from organic farm sources.

Creating lacto-fermented garlic is the easy part. Deciding how to use it may be the difficult part, because there are so many good choices!

Just like all the other lacto-fermented recipes, we can’t give you exact amounts of how many pounds you will use for each Pickl-It.

Garlic heads are all different, depending on the variety, grower, and growing season.

A good rule-of-thumb is that you may get anywhere between 6 and 16 heads of garlic in 1-pound. There may be between 6 and 16 cloves of garlic in each head. You can start to see the math nightmare developing….

Start off simple. Read through the recipe. It’s easy, so try it.

Pickl-It Pickled Garlic Recipe

The first and most important issue is that ONLY organic garlic should be used¹. Like most of your other foods, try to find a local source so that you know what you’re getting, how it was grown, and what chemicals may or may not have been used.

The most time-consuming part about creating high-quality, stable, lacto-fermented garlic cloves is spent in separating the cloves from the garlic heads and removing the skins. But at the end of a not-so-tough day, you’ll have created a stable, tasty, naturally-preserved valuable food. It’s worth the time spent.

Take your time. You do not want to damage the delicate garlic clove skin, or cut into the cloves, which will start a chain reaction of chemical events.

Do not cut the root end as some recipes recommend. Typically, those who recommend cutting the garlic cloves, in order to remove the outer skin, are either going to use the cloves immediately in a recipe, OR, if “pickling”, they’re using the modern distilled-vinegar method along with heat-processing (pasteurization) which results in a dead-nutrient, embalmed substance.

They are not concerned with nutrition. Nutrition is, however, our highest priority.

Blanching is the key to skin removal.

1. Break open a garlic head, sticking a knife tip, or if wide enough, your thumbs in a crevasse – the seam between two garlic cloves.
2. Remove all garlic cloves from the root end and center stalk.
3. Heat 6-cups of water to near-boil. There will be a “puff” of steam rising off the surface of the water when the water is ready.
4. While water is heating, prepare a bowl of ice water which includes 4-cups of water and 4-cups of ice cubes. Set aside.
5. Prepare 3.5% brine – 33 grams of salt for every 4-cups of water. Set aside.
6. Drop 1-cup of separated cloves into the simmering water for :30 (30 seconds).
7. Remove cloves from water and quickly dip into the ice water. Cool for :30 (30 seconds) and remove from water by hand, or with a slotted spoon.
8. Spread blanched/cooled cloves on a cookie sheet and continue with remainder of cloves until all of them are blanched and cooled.
9. Squeeze the garlic cloves, one at a time, to release paper, if the paper isn’t already sliding off. Don’t crush the cloves. Some varieties are more “stubborn” and may take a gentle coaxing of a knife tip, OR, place 20-30 cloves in a kitchen towel and gently “roll” them back and forth between the towel, removing the “skin” or “paper”.
10. Place peeled garlic cloves in the Pickl-It, cover with prepared-brine filling to the *Pickl-It shoulder
11. Use the “Dunk’R to hold down “any cloves that float; adding carrot slices under the Dunk’R, if necessary
12. Wrap sides of jar with towel to block out light
13. Allow covered jar to sit on counter for 7-days; place in refrigerator and continue to “age”; garlic benefits from aging up to 3-months before use; stores well in refrigerator, up to 1-year

Some of the most reader-friendly articles I’ve found on garlic are located:

Garlic is #1 Herb

Garlic’s Useful Forms

Fermented Garlic Scape

In-depth look at the chemistry of garlic

Garlic Health Benefits – health benefits as well as interesting information on topic use of garlic as a way to get it into the system faster as well as infusing wine, as another means of speeding it up into the system (since allicin, the key component is usually neutralized or greatly reduced by saliva and the stomach’s digestive enzymes, not necessarily making it into the digestive tract, etc.)

What Happens with Allicin Breaks Down – more in-depth on what happens with allicin breaks down in the system, and what other components are delivered due to that breakdown.

Good information on varieties of garlic

Extracts from History and Medical Uses of Garlic

Historical Perspective on the Use of Garlic

Some practices of medicine in the Greek Bronze Age

Extracts from the history and medical properties of garlic –

Ground, packaged spices turn rancid creating “off”, bitter flavors, as well as having a greatly-diminished shelf-life.

Cause for Concern in Chinese Garlic?

¹ “Conventionally Grown Garlic Contaminated With Chemicals” – Natural News

“My final, considered judgment is that the hardy bulb [garlic] blesses and ennobles everything it touches – with the possible exception of ice cream and pie.” – Angelo Pellegrini, ‘The Unprejudiced Palate’ (1948)

One of our favorite offerings at the Gilroy Garlic Festival, is their world-renowned garlic ice cream. Depending on how much you love its raw burn and “Stinking Rose” factor, it can either be a tasty-treat or a scary-dare.

For my mother-in-law, the entire festival was a scary-dare, while my husband and I viewed it as an exciting culinary adventure – 100% Garlic! What was not to like! We excitedly rushed through the entrance, while my mother-in-law balked, repulsed by the garlic’s aromatic essence (“strong stench” is what she called it) permeating the early-morning air.

We convinced her she’d get used to the “aroma”, but her nose remained in the “if-you-keep-doing-that-it-will-remain-stuck” position – wrinkled-up and held high – for most of the day. Towards the end of the day, she perked up when we mentioned stopping by the ice cream booth for “dessert”.

“Oh, look, there’s a sugar cone,” she rejoiced, unfurling her nose, happy that she’d found a familiar “food”. It only took one lick of the garlic ice cream for her nose to resume its wrinkled-position, as she struggled for words. “Hmmmm. That’s…interesting.”

“Offered free each year, the popular vanilla ice cream is made with bits of raw garlic. Although lines for the mutant treat are consistently the longest at the festival, the overall consensus among curious garlic daredevils is that it’s merely ‘interesting.’ Mercury News

Interesting? Garlic and vanilla bean are naturally-compatible spices, a classic pairing of flavors used in a variety of lovely sauces and vinaigrettes. But – and this is the important part – the secret to pairing garlic with vanilla is that garlic must be tamed, either by roasting, sauteeing, baking or pickling.

When garlic is naturally-pickled (fermented) its flavor becomes nutty, mild, and slightly sweet – very similar to gently-baked garlic heads – with the addition of a nice “tang” from the pickling brine. Doesn’t that sound like a good way to turn “interesting” garlic ice cream into “Amazing!” garlic ice cream?

So Many Recipes. So Few That Will Work! I could have simply used a favorite Gail Gand vanilla ice cream recipe as the base, but I was curious if anyone else was experimenting with garlic ice cream, so I took a look around the internet.

Recipe #1

Supposedly, this is the real recipe for the festival’s garlic ice cream.

Hmmmm…..I don’t think so.

They’re only using one raw clove. Several years of tasting-experience tells me that’s insufficient. There’s no sense in wasting precious grass-fed (real) cream and milk…

Recipe #2

This recipe contains honey and 5 whole, raw garlic cloves. That’s an improvement, but it still won’t pass the “Garlicked-Up” test:

When greeting a gorgeous police-mounted horse patrolling the Gilroy Garlic Festival, if the horse backs away, snorting and pawing the ground, you are sufficiently Garlicked-Up. “He really hates garlic and this assignment”, sighed the officer.

Recipe #3

Be still my heart. This recipe looks horse-snorting good AND adds bacon. I love bacon. It’s smoky-element would be brilliant with the pickled garlic!

Ironically, this recipe was created at the Four Seas, the third-oldest ice cream shack in New England, a region known for its lobsters, clam chowder, maple syrup and blueberries, and not exactly for its spicy cuisine. Maybe the owner of the Four Seas was influenced by another New Englander, Professor Wilbur Scoville, – of the Scoville Chili Heat Scale. because it calls for 1/4-cup of pureed garlic! Garlicked-up!

I made a few changes, first, changing this from a savory to a sweet ice cream. A scoop of this on a chocolate waffle? Heaven!

Increasing the honey, I also added a vanilla bean and skipped the lemon juice, an acid that could too easily out-shout the Pickl-It garlic cloves natural lactic-acid, created during the fermenting process. Acid is important in cutting the fat, so that the ice creams flavor will taste as good from the first to the very last bite.

Sweet, smoky, salty, nutty, vanilla, mellow garlic – it’s all in here – wrapped in layers of thick and creamy egg-custard ice cream.

Pickl-It Pickled-Garlic Bacon Vanilla Honey Ice Cream
(with modifications to the original)

• 4 cups whole raw, real, grass-fed, sun-filled pasture milk
• 3 cups raw, real, grass-fed, sun-filled pasture heavy cream
• 2 vanilla-beans, split
• 8 egg pastured (grass & bug-fed) egg yolks
• 4 tablespoon raw (not pasteurized!) honey
• 1/2 cup (1/2-lb) healthy pastured-bacon, rendered/cooked and very finely minced
• 1/4 cup pureed Pickl-It pickled garlic cloves

The following instructions are from one of my favorite pastry chef’s, Gale Gand. Learning to watch for the “puff of steam” at 160F was one of the best tips I’ve ever learned from any chef. If you follow her directions, you’ll end up with an incredibly creamy (not icy) custard ice cream.

1. Put a large mixing bowl in the freezer to chill.
2. Pour milk and cream into a saucepan.
3. Split vanilla beans, scraping seeds with sharp knife, adding, along with scraped pods, to the milk/cream.
4. Bring whole milk, cream and vanilla to a simmer, stirring occasionally to make sure the mixture doesn’t burn or stick to the bottom of the pan.
5. While milk/cream are heating, in a bowl, whisk egg yolks and honey together until thick and lemon-yellow; set aside.
6. When the cream mixture reaches a fast simmer, turn it off. Do NOT LET IT BOIL.
7. In a thin stream (an emulsion process, just like making mayo) whisk half of heated milk into the egg yolk & honey mixture.
8. Pour the egg-cream mixture into the saucepan containing the remaining cream mixture.
9. Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly with a wooden spoon.
10. At 160°F degrees, the mixture will give off a puff of steam.
11. When the mixture reaches 180°F, it will be thickened and creamy, like eggnog. If you don’t have a thermometer, test it by dipping a CLEAN wooden spoon into the mixture. Run your finger down the back of the spoon. If the stripe remains clear, the mixture is ready, if the edges blur, it is not quite thick enough yet. When it is ready, quickly remove from the heat.
12. Meanwhile, remove the bowl from the freezer, put 4 handfuls of ice cubes in the bottom, and add cold water to cover. Rest a smaller bowl in the ice water.
13. Strain the cream mixture through a fine sieve to remove the vanilla bean pieces, into a smaller bowl.
14. Chill 3-hours, then freeze according to the directions for your ice cream maker.

The hint of a first frost is in the air, especially noticeable here in the higher elevations of New Hampshire. It’s probably still a couple weeks away, but the lower sunlight levels and long winter shadows seem to be pushing summer away, more rapidly than other years.

This was an oppressive summer, its endless heat and humidity always promising but never delivering rain. One of my favorite crops grown by our CSA are cherry tomatoes, but this year proved to be quite a challenge. Had it not been for the daily watering by the CSA-farmers, the plants would never have made it this far. We’ve had some good douses of rain the past few days, and now, finally, near the end of the growing season, their multi-branched clusters are simultaneously flowering as well as producing heavy, beautiful fruit. I’m dehydrating the ripe ones, and have a plan for the green ones.

Half-a-dozen years ago, I adapted a recipe from Ricks Picks, for whole, pickled green cherry tomatoes. Ricks was intended to be a “fresh pickle”, adding vinegar and letting the “pickle” cure for a week or two, and then consuming them within a few weeks. My adaptation leaves out the acetic acid – vinegar – because I much prefer the clean, mild flavor of lactic acid, created in the anaerobic conditions of the Pickl-It.

Natural, spontaneous lactic-acid bacteria, present on all forms of life, soil, air and soil, are masters at creating lactic acid which is like vinegar, but in many ways, healthier! It’s not as bitter, or harsh as vinegar, and unlike acetic acid (vinegar), lactic acid vinegar protects the natural probiotics of naturally fermented foods.

All you need to do this? A truly air-tight container! Throw those mason jars out. They’ll never be anaerobic. Grab a Pickl-It, the one and only wire-bail latching container that is repeatedly tested by the manufacturer to ensure it earns the title, “hermetic”, which means “air tight”.

Pickl-It Lacto-Fermented Green Cherry Tomatoes
(adapted from Rick Field of Ricks Picks)

This is an incredibly simple recipe, one I’ve adapted from Ricks Picks. They’re ready to eat in about two weeks, but store incredibly well throughout the winter. Don’t expect a tomato flavor, but instead, more like a pickled-seasoned tomatillo.

I love using them with tomatillo, finely dicing them into green sauces, served over enchiladas, or creating a mid-winter Green Tomato Salsa, finely chopping them along with cilantro, winter-stored onions and several rough-chopped tomatoes, or rehydrated, chopped tomatoes.

Following Recipe Makes 1 1/2-liter Pickl-It

Ingredients

• 4 bay leaves (don’t double these until you have tripled this recipe, using 6-cups of cherry tomatoes)
• 2 teaspoon pickling spice
• 4 cloves garlic
• 2 dill head (or 3 sprigs fresh dill and 1 teaspoon dill seed)
• 1 small rough-chopped onion
• 1/2 teaspoon celery seed
• 4 cups (approximately) hard green cherry tomatoes, washed

For the brine: (This makes more than enough for 1 pint, but who wants to only make 1 pint?)

• 8 cups filtered water (no chlorine or fluoride)
• 6 T high-quality unrefined sea salt

Instructions

1. Using a clean, sterilized Pickl-It, place all ingredients, beginning with bay leaves, and ending with green cherry tomatoes, into the Pickl-It container.
2. Clean cherry tomatoes, making sure all stems, leaves, and any sand/dirt have been thoroughly removed.
3. Here’s the tedious part – poke each cherry tomato several times with a sewing needle. This is so the brine penetrates through the skin, otherwise, the skin will remain tough, like leather. This is a good job for little helpers – 9-year-old, and above, children who like to help in the kitchen. (Or adults who have anger management issues.)
4. Cherry tomatoes won’t expand like other fermented vegetables, so you may fill the Pickl-It above the “shoulder” line, but please leave at least 1-inch of air space between the top of the brine and Dunk’R, and the bottom of the airlock to allow gases a way to escape.
5. Stir salt into filtered water until dissolved and then pour over cherry tomatoes.
6. Place Dunk’R in place to hold tomatoes under the brine.
7. Latch the Pickl-It lid, fill the airlock with water and cover it with the plastic lid; cover the sides of the Pickl-It to prevent light from neutralizing the vitamins and lactic acid bacteria; place the Pickl-It in a dark corner on your kitchen counter for 5-7 days.

I find these are the most flavorful when I refrigerate them after 7 days, and place them in the refrigerator to continue curing for another 30-days.

Note: The pickling spice I used came from an Amish store and was organic. It was whole spices including mustard seed, allspice, dill seed, cinnamon chips, dill seed, celery seed, mild chiles, cloves, and caraway seed.

This recipe is adapted from the book “Traditional Ukrainian Cooking” by Savella Stechishin.

I eliminated the green beans and white beans called for in the recipe, and instead, increased the cabbage.

There are two key flavor ingredients that are absolutely necessary when making real Hungarian beet borshch. The first is home-made beef stock. The second is traditional lacto-fermented beet juice kvass, which provides the “tang” or sour-notes of flavor, sadly replaced with lemon juice or apple cider vinegar in modern recipes.

The beet juice kvass offers the best well-rounded “acid”, giving this recipe a truly authentic, old-world flavor.

I love serving the borshch with feta-cheese gougeres – little French cheese puffs – for my own modern twist.

It is assumed all ingredients are organic and preferably biodynamic for the maximum nutrients, and lowest exposure to industrial-farming toxins.

I usually make a quadruple batch of this recipe – easy to do as there are no major adjustments needed to the ingredients or spices. This recipe keeps well, and becomes even richer and more complex in flavor after a few days of refrigerated storage. Enjoy!

Ingredients

• 1 – 1/2 pounds soup meat with bone
• 10 to 12 cups cold water
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 medium onion, chopped
• 2 medium beets, cut in thin strips (for extra flavor, julienne the lacto-fermented beets from the Pickl-It beet juice kvass
• 1 medium carrot, cut in thin strips
• 1 medium potato, diced
• 1/2 cup thinly sliced celery
• 3 to 4 cups shredded cabbage
• 3/4 cup strained tomatoes or tomato juice
• 1 clove garlic, crushed, if desired
• 1 tablespoon flour (optional, only if thicker borshch is desired)
• 1/4-cup beet juice kvass
• Salt and pepper (to taste)
• Chopped fresh dill weed
• 1/2 cup sour cream

1. Cover the meat with the cold water, add the salt, bring slowly to the boiling point, then skim. Cover and simmer for 1 1/2 hours. (It’s a good idea to cook meat one day before adding vegetables; allow broth to cool. Then skim off fat before adding vegetables).
2. Add the onion and beets; cook 10 to 15 minutes or until the beets are almost done. If young beets are used, cook them together with the other vegetables. If beets from the Pick-It beet kvass are used, add them during the last 4-5 minutes of simmering, just enough to warm them through.
3. Add the carrot, potato, celery; continue cooking for about 10 minutes.
4. Finally put in the cabbage and cook until it is tender. Do not overcook.
5. Stir in the tomatoes or tomato juice and the crushed garlic.
6. Blend the flour with 3 tablespoons of cold water, spoon into it some soup liquid, and then stir into the borshch. If a thickened borshch is not desired, omit the flour.
7. Add beet kvass
8. Season to taste with salt and pepper and bring to the boiling point. Flavor it with the chopped dill.
9. Just before serving, add a dollop of sour cream and a “splash” of Pickl-It beet kvass.