Pickling Adventures, Part 3

We Made Pickles!

(Read Part One and Part Two of the Pickling Adventures!)

Well, we waited for our pickles to be thoroughly soaked through and seasoned. We were supposed to wait ten days but we opened the jar and began eating them three or four days early. They were sliced dill spears instead of whole cucumbers so the brine penetrated a lot faster than it would have otherwise.

And the taste? They were…interesting…

For one, it tasted like the brine solution was too strong. I followed the Bon Appetit recipe for the percentages but it still tasted too salty. Also, the fennel came through very strongly and gave the pickles an odd aftertaste. And they just didn’t taste like, well, the way pickles should taste. The recipe I was following insisted that brine and spice was all that was needed, so I went with that for a while.

The kids each took their tastes, and their reactions were underwhelming, to say the least. For a household that loves pickles as much as we all do, this was no good. Everyone took a taste and politely handed their pickles back or threw them away. The pickles weren’t bad, but they weren’t good either.

I knew there was only one more thing to try, and that was to disregard the recipe and add the vinegar that our pickles so desperately needed. I waited a few days, thinking I had to pick up vinegar from the store the next time I went shopping, until I found a bottle of white vinegar just sitting pretty in our pantry cabinet. There was only about ten or eleven ounces of white vinegar left in the bottle, so I prayed that it was the right amount and dumped the whole thing into our jar of pickles. I mixed the jar up again and put it in the fridge upside down for the next four hours to wait for the vinegar to have a chance to penetrate.

The difference was night and day. As you can see, I had to get the twins out of the pickle jar.

With the vinegar added they were close to perfect. The vinegar balanced the brine so it didn’t taste too salty and the spices coalesced into a single pickle flavor. The pickles tasted clean and preservative-free. Our pickles obviously don’t have artificial colors or chemicals, so they have a really fresh quality to them. I’m pleased.

But now the jar is empty. I guess I need to make more pickles.