In honor of the last few days of summer, and because I’ve had an insatiable craving for pickles (though I’m not pregnant; no worries!), I decided to try my hand at creating my own. Nathan and I bought peppers, onions, garlic, and cucumbers at the Pike Place Market on Saturday.
The wee cukes were grown in Puyallup, WA, which is spitting distance from our homes in Seattle. So cute and fat and green!
These guys are lacto-fermented pickles, made using a recipe found here. The Machine Project folks say:
In lacto-fermentation, salt is added to vegetables, either by covering them in salty water or by mixing them with salt to draw out their own juices…The result is a pickled food that will keep without canning or refrigeration.
These veggies don’t contain any vinegar, and are about the simplest preserved food you can create. They’re full of organisms and nutrients that are good for your tummy! I put up five jars of food within a half hour, and only used a few simple ingredients, most of which came from the market, though I got the powdered wasabi at World Spice.
From left to right: mustard onion chips, onion and pickled peppers (hee!), wasabi garlic spears, dill garlic spears, black pepper and salt simple pickle spears. We should be able to sample the pickles within the week, and they should be perfect to munch and refrigerate within a month.
