Tag: pickle

Remember when I finally stopped letting Costco cucumbers die on my counter and made lacto-fermented pickles?

I was pretty excited about them.

I checked them daily, and found myself skimming the top because of some wild yeast.

A little over a week ago, I decided I wasn’t going to fuck around with the yeast growth anymore. I’d done some research, bounced what I was seeing off Gemini, and everything seemed normal enough—but I’d reached the limit of how adventurous I felt like being. I kept thinking, “I do not want to fuck these up.”

Only one problem to fix before we could call this test done. I still had to eat one. It took another day to work up the nerve:

I don’t know if I fucked them up—or if I’m just not used to that flavour.

Nothing about them screamed failure. Maybe I’m just expecting that sharp, vinegary deli pickle you get beside a burger.

Dill. Garlic. Salt. Crunch. Vinegar.

These weren’t that.

After Mrs Sandemano’s taste test—she caught me red-handed eating these straight out of the jar—we agreed they were missing acid more than anything.

So I added two tablespoons of apple cider vinegar and put them back in the fridge. Hopefully, they’d improve.

A couple of days later, I tried another one.

Ehh…5/10?

They’re better. The vinegar got them a little closer to what my brain apparently thinks a pickle is supposed to taste like.

Still, I’m not exactly standing here thinking, fuck yeah, check out this pickle.

I also noticed this weird white webbing on the skin.

Which made me wonder if I’d managed to grow something new and exciting.

I looked it up with Gemini. Apparently it’s “stomata and lenticels”—part of the cucumber itself. I had to double-check that because the explanation sounded like bullshit.

I’d bore you with the extensive rabbit hole, but you can go down that one yourself. Stomata & lenticels. Apparently it’s a whole thing. I learned something.

Also, reflecting on it—shit. Salt. I added more liquid to an already-established brine without adding any more salt, which means I also changed the salt concentration.

Did that matter at this point, especially once they were refrigerated? I don’t know yet.

So rather than continue standing in my kitchen suspiciously eating pickles by myself, I’m taking them to a party tonight.

Verdict à venir. Maybe I fucked up the pickles. Maybe I need to get used to lacto-fermented pickles. Or maybe there’s something interesting in the middle.

Either way, I’m apparently making more pickles.

Every year it’s the same—I buy a bag of Mucci mini cucumbers from Costco (when they’re under $3, always a good idea in theory) and every year they go soft and sad on the counter before I actually do anything with them. They always end up like this:

This time, no more excuses. Fermented pickles, finally, and a real question to answer while I’m at it: does a fancy Pickle Pipe airlock actually make a difference, or is daily burping just as good?

So I set up two jars side by side. Same cucumbers, same brine, same everything — except one is a real canning jar that has a proper self-venting Pickle Pipe lid, and the other is a repurposed Putter’s jar with a plain lid that I’ll have to burp by hand. Whichever one wins, I want to actually know. (Also, it has absolutely nothing to do with the ongoing debate with Mrs Sandemano whether we ought to keep my collection of empty jars.)

The setup (Day 0) :

• Mucci mini cucumbers, ends trimmed about 1/8”

• One clove of garlic per jar, and not just any garlic — the first of the season from my own garden.

• A big pinch of pickling spice in each jar (scientific measurement: thumb and two fingers, roughly 1 tsp).

• A few fresh dill fronds.

• Two 1L jars: one repurposed pickle jar with a solid lid, one wide-mouth jar from Walmart that happens to fit a Pickle Pipe perfectly.

The brine (and a small math incident) :

Target was a 2.5% salt brine. I weighed the water from both jars combined: 744g. Then I did the percentage math and got 1.8g—a number so small it looked wrong. I consulted Gemini, and found out it was because I’d added an extra decimal place. No sweat, multiplied the result by 10, landed on 18.6g of pickling salt, rounded up to 19g.

“Ah yes, precision.”

—Papa Sandemano

I dissolved the 19g into the full 744g of water in one bowl, whisking until it went clear, then split it back evenly between the two jars, leaving about 1cm of headspace in each.

Day 1:

Nothing to report yet — no cloudiness, no bubbles, nothing dramatic. Just me, checking on two silent jars like they owe me an update. Stoked. Almost impatient. This is apparently just what fermentation day 1 is: waiting for something to happen while a garlic clove sits there doing absolutely nothing to prove it either.

Next check-in whenever the brine starts doing something interesting. Which — fingers crossed — should be soon.