I found out recently that little man loves pickles. He even knows how to say “pickle”. Once he started verbalizing that he wanted a pickle I figured I would make some myself. I knew my new pressure cooker could pretty much do anything; so I did some research on making pickles with the pressure cooker (which can also be done on the stove) and then found ANOTHER way to do pickles without the pressure cook or the stove. So here goes homemade pickles two ways.
Let me do a little explains about pickles. You might be familiar with the neon pickles you get at the bar park or the movie theater. What you might NOT know about these pickles are that they soaked in preservatives and yellow food dye (I know, I know, my husband always tells me I have to go and ruin everything…). That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t eat pickles! I for one love pickles and have eaten plenty of neon pickles in my day. But there are much better options out there these days, and it’s much easier than you think to make your own.
With the stove or pressure cooker, it’s as easy as boiling the picking liquid, then putting your veggies of choice in there. Seriously, it’s that easy! Let them sit for a bit and BAM. Homemade pickles. Here is what you need:
- veggies for pickling (think cucumbers, green beans, peppers, zucchini, carrots etc)
- pickling spice, or spices of choice as well as fresh herbs.
- apple cider vinegar (or white vinegar, depending on the flavor you’re going for)
So that’s one way, and you might be wondering about the second way I mentioned? Well after researching pickles years ago (not really sure where my interested in pickles came from, I’ve got a lot of useless knowledge in my brain that comes in handy every now and then), I learned that while you hear about pickles being healthy with probiotics, this actually isn’t the case. The pickles you buy on the pickle aisle at the grocery store do not have any probiotics benefits whatsoever. They’ve all been cooked and pasteurized, rather than letting them “pickle” themselves in salt and water. Misleading, huh? Only those that require refrigeration are built with probiotic benefits. The others have just been socked in vinegar, and while they do taste sour, have not really been fermented.
That is there my second way to make pickles comes in. It is just a mix of water and plan old salt. And out let them sit. And sit some more. Letting the fermentation process happen by itself! Not to get too science-y, but it’s the process of lactic acid fermentation that brings out the probiotic properties, the same process for kimchi and sauerkraut. These will have a little different taste than those pickles out of the pickle aisle, but you can still flavor them with herbs and spices of your choice. The recipe at the bottom of this post is for the cooked pickles, but here is the recipe for the fermented pickles.
- Mix together 2 tablespoons of water to 1 quart of water.
- Put in chopped veggies, herbs, and spices.
- Put a pinch of black tea leaves (loose leaves) to keep the veggies crisp.
- Make sure the veggies are completely covered in the brine.
- Put lids on and allow these jars to sit at room temperature for about 10 days.
- Check your jars doing the first few days to realize any carbon dioxide build up (just open the jars and quickly let the air out).
- Once done, then put them in fridge.
Now for the cooked pickles, these will taste more like traditional pickles at the store (expect better because they aren’t made with preservatives) and you can season these how you like! Try spicy pickles, herb and garlic pickles, you can try sweet pickles by adding some sugar, sweet and spicy with a little spice AND sugar. You can’t go wrong!