re: Pickling for beginners

Pickling is stupid easy, even true pickling (using bacteria for fermentation to get the acidity instead of a vinegar bath). Basically, you get a bunch of pickling cucumbers and scrub them well and trim off the ends. You get a pickling spice blend of your choosing and put it in a glazed crock. You stuff the cucumbers tightly down into the crock on top of the spices.

Get some pickling salt and mix it into water in the ratio that the instructions say to use. Pour the brine to thoroughly cover the cucumbers. Put the remaining brine in a ziplock and stuff it down into the crock to keep the cucumbers submerged. Flat stones can also be used for this, but it's important to make sure the cucumbers stay submerged. You can cover with cheesecloth if you wish to keep bugs and debris out, but you need to make sure it can breathe so the bacteria can colonize the brine. Remember: this food is alive.

Then you put it in a place that's about 70 degrees and wait. Every day, skim off the scum, yeast, mold, etc. that will grow on top. When the bubbles stop, the fermentation is done and you can stash in the fridge for a couple of months.

Basically, what you're trying to do is to make sure the lactic acid bacteria responsible for fermentation survive and can crowd out the bacteria responsible for spoilage. You encourage this by keeping it around 70 degrees, which is ideal for the lactic acid bacteria, but not ideal for spoilage bacteria. Too much higher than this and the spoilage bacteria will begin to have an easier time growing and the lactic acid bacteria start struggling.

In addition, the submersion in the brine is important as well. The bacteria you want are anaerobic, so lots of oxygen will kill them. The bacteria you don't want are aerobic, so they'll thrive in high oxygen. If you let the cucumbers float and get exposed to air, they'll rot. This is why you pack them tightly into the jar and put something heavy on them to make sure they'll stay under the brine.

Finally, you give the lactic acid bacteria a further leg up with the brine itself. The salty conditions inhibit the growth of the spoilage bacteria while leaving the lactic acid bacteria alive to do their thing and crowd out the spoilage bacteria. Too little salt and the spoilage bacteria win and your cucumbers rot. Too much salt and all the bacteria get killed off and your cucumbers won't pickle. Just right, and you get delicious pickles. So, it's important to make sure that you follow the pickling salt directions to get the mix right.

Remember that pickling is an ancient preservation method. It isn't complicated. Most people just have never done it. It's literally just putting the cucumbers in spiced salt water and letting it sit for a week in a cool place.