Pickled Cucumbers - Gherkins, Spears and Chips

Long time, no post! It's been a several months since I last posted something on Jarhead (work, uni and a butchery blog has been taking up all my time!) but rest assured the pickling has continued.  

With the start of summer comes the beginning of cucumber season.  Over the next few weeks I'll be posting about some different approaches I've taken to preserving cucumbers.

The last time I made cucumbers was in December 2013.  I had eaten or given away most of the jars, but I had one remaining.  I had stored the cucumbers in a mason jar and had processed it in a boiling water bath, so it should have been shelf stable. So I cracked it open and cautiously tasted the pickles - to my relief, they were still really juicy and delicious.  The canning had been a success! They had definitely fermented a bit and had changed colour into a deep khaki, but the cucumbers still had structural pickle integrity and hadn't softened or deteriorated.

Year old pickles

They were still delicious!

For this previous batch of cucumbers, I went to the Flemington markets in the middle of December, which is after the peak of the Kirby cucumber season so the supplies at the market were fairly sparse.  With this in mind, I decided to get in early this time, at the end of November, to scoop up the Kirbys at their best. 

That morning, Flemington markets was insanely busy with lots of families stocking up on produce for the holiday season.  Compared to last time when there was only one vendor selling Kirby cucumbers, there were actually several vendors offering them – the hard part was working out which ones had the prize cucumbers!

After circling the markets and spotting the cucumber vendors, I snapped up two crates of larger Kirby cucumbers from one vendor (I was lucky because they were his last crates!) These larger Kirby cucumbers looked like they had just been pulled out of the ground and had a bit of dirt on them, but nothing that couldn't be washed off.  They came in different shapes and certainly weren't aesthetically perfect, but I really don't mind having some weirdly shaped cucumbers - they add character to the batch and, in any event, they can be cut up into spears and chips to fill the gaps between the whole cucumbers.  

You need to look for a good size (smaller cucumbers are preferable as they tend to retain their shape and integrity once pickled), good colour (a nice shade of green with not too much yellow), not too much damage (but don't be turned off by a few imperfections), and firm feel – you don’t want a limp pickle! You can work around most of this, but just make sure the price you pay reflects the quality of the product.  

I lugged these crates back to the car, and was about to leave but had last minute cucumber remorse and decided I needed a few more.  One vendor, who was particularly popular that morning, was selling bags of smaller, almost perfect looking cucumbers.  So after buying an additional bag from that vendor, I ended up with around 10kg of cucumbers in total.  This came at a cost of $35, which was an absolute bargain.  

Driving back home, I was slightly worried that I had gone overboard on the quantity - how was I going to be able to process all of these cucumbers in one weekend? When stacked up together, the pile of cucumbers was monolithic! 

I wanted to give the pickled cucumbers to my family, friends and work colleagues as Christmas presents (I mean, who doesn't love pickles?) But as I started to rise and scrub the cucumbers, I realised that I would have enough cucumbers to give out as presents and still have a year's supply for myself!  

So I decided that I would process most of the cucumbers using the same recipe I used last time, but with slight tweaks to perfect it! Then, I would experiment and make a few different types of pickles, which I will post up on the blog in the coming weeks: 

• Dill and Cucumber Relish;
• Turkish style cucumbers pickled in lemon juice;
• Fermented kosher pickles; and
• Spicy Korean cucumber pickles.

Jarhead's Perfect Pickled Cucumber (Gherkin) Recipe

I decided to use the same recipe as last year to process most of the cucumbers.  While I thought that the 2013 batch was excellent, some sugar added to the brine would balance the flavour out.  

Processing the cucumbers is time consuming.  The first step of the process is letting the cucumbers sit in a salt brine overnight.  I had containers of cucumbers sitting all over my small apartment, which ended up smelling like vinegar for a few days - I might need to invest in one enormous container for next time.  

This part of the process really requires an extra pair of hands - or as many people as you can bribe to assist.  Between heating the pickling brine, sterilising and packing jars, and then canning the jars in a large pot, there's just too much happening simultaneously for one person to manage.  

But in the end I had more than 20 jars to give out as gifts.  For a simple way of making an old jar look presentable, or at least somewhat 'rustic' and folksy, we tied some Xmas pudding calico over the lids using standard brown twine.  They looked great! 

Another tip for those starting out  - labelling. I’ve found out the hard way how important it is to label your jars, at least with a manufacture date, but preferably also the contents - once you get a few batches going with different recipes it becomes very difficult to work out which is which. So invest in a label maker, or just a permanent marker!

Recipe


What you need:

• 1.5 kg of Kirby pickling cucumbers;

• 2 cups of apple cider vinegar;

• 8 cloves of garlic, peeled and sliced (I like them to be really garlicky);

• 1 teaspoon of fennel seeds;

• 2 tablespoons of coriander seeds;

• 1/4 cup of sea salt;

• 1 bunch of dill;

• 1 tablespoon of peppercorns;

• 3 tablespoons of sugar;

• 6 cups of water.  

The pickling:

1. Place the water in a pot and on a low heat, dissolve the salt, peppercorns; coriander seeds, and fennel seeds.  Set this brine aside and allow to cool to room temperature.
2. Wash and scrub the cucumbers well, making sure there's no spines or dirt.  
3. Slice off a thin round near the blossom end of the cucumbers.   The blossom end contains an enzyme that can lead to the softening of the pickles.  For any oddly shaped cucumbers that won't be easily packed into a jar, slice them into circular rounds (chips), or cut them lengthways into spears (quarters or halves).  These chips and spears will be good for filing the gaps in a jar between the whole gherkins.  
4. Place the prepared cucumbers in a large plastic container and then cover in the cooled salt brine. Also add in a handful of dill. You can weigh down the cucumbers with a plate to ensure they're submerged.  Leave them in the brine for 24 hours in the fridge or at room temperature.  
5. 24 hours later, measure out 2 cups of brine and put it aside.  Sieve the rest of the brine and save the peppercorns and other aromatics.
6. Then, pack the cucumbers into your clean, sterilised jars.  As you pack them in, add in a sprig or two of dill in each jar along with some slices of garlic.    
7. Mix the vinegar and the reserved brine in a pot and bring to the boil.  Add in the sliced garlic.
8. Pour the boiling hot pickling brine over the pickles.  
9. For long term shelf storage you can process the jars in a boiling water bath for ten minutes.  See the recipe in my post about Caramel Apple Jam for more information about processing jars in a water bath.

Dill Pickles featuring Kirby Cucumbers

Since the beginning of the Jarhead blog, I've wanted to attempt to make some quintessential cucumber dill pickles.  

You’d think that because you can generally find pickled gherkins in supermarkets everywhere, it would be easy to find fresh, un-pickled Kirby cucumbers in fruit and veg shops.  But they proved to be elusive, with sources shrouded in mystery. Several like-minded acquaintances advised that the Sydney Markets in Flemington was rumoured to house a few dealers, but no one could confirm this based on first hand experience.

After some further online research, I found that Kirby cucumbers are seasonal and are only available in the Australian Summer.  And, as per previous advice, the best place to find them was the Sydney Markets at Flemington.  But was it worth driving all the way there? I am a car-less inner city GoGet convert, so I have to assess the value of each trip as sad as that is.

The answer (of course) was yes!  After all, I had just driven 400kms for a few cherries. So one morning in December, I got up at the crack of dawn and drove out past Ryde and Sydney Olympic Park, to the  ‘fruit bowl’ of Sydney’s Western Suburbs.  I thought that I would be one of the first people at the markets, but when I arrived just after 6am I found that it was already in full swing. 

During weekdays, Sydney Markets is purely wholesale – fruit and vegetable sellers from across Sydney go to the markets to buy their stock for the day/week; restauranteurs and chefs find the best produce to put on their menus.  But on Saturdays, the market is open to the general public.

The markets have such a great buzz, even if it is a bit overwhelming on your first encounter.  You get vibrant colours, curious smells, with a few over-zealous shouts thrown in from the spruikers, just to make sure you’re awake.   It was as if an aeroplane hanger had been filled with fruit and veg, kebab stores and cafes, and people from all walks of life.  Walking through the markets, you get the sense that a lot of the people there are regular market-goers, and have relationships with their fruit or veg vendor - they have a capsicum guy, an apple guy, and a Chinese hairy gourd guy.

As a Flemington markets virgin, I didn’t have any idea where I would find my cucumbers.  It was like a vegetable version of Where’s Wally, having to scan through all of the hundreds of boxes of vegetables on show, just to find baby cucumbers.  Luckily, I found a guy selling small Kirby cucumbers in bags.  He said they were seconds because they were in weird shapes, but I didn’t mind – they looked really fresh, and I have a bit if a thing for ugly/mutant veggies  (I think I feel sorry for them – for another blog about less than attractive veg, see my post on Japanese Pickled Daikon).  So I bought a 3 kilo bag for $18. 

After anther 20mins or so stumbling around blindly amid the throngs, I found a different guy selling another kind of baby cucumbers – they were small but thinner than the kirbys and looked more like mini Lebanese cucumbers.  So I figured I should see how they worked in a pickle, and purchased another kilo.   I also managed to get a nice bunch of dill to flavour the pickles.

The pickling process for these was fairly simple.  Most of the recipes simply asked for the cucumbers to be covered in a pickling brine and then sealed in sterilised jars.  However, Kevin West’s recipe from Saving the Season required the cucumbers to be soaked in a salt brine first.  I decided to do this with my batch, because from experience, the salt extracts the excess water from vegetables and leads to crispier pickles.  I also canned some of the batch for longer term storage (I’m yet to open these but I’ll keep you updated when I finally taste them).

These gherkins have been the most popular pickle I’ve made.  I gave a jar to a friend on a Friday and by the next Monday, I received the jar back, empty!   One of the jars I filled was a huge 2 litre jar, and its now only a quarter full.  On New Years Eve I even used some of the pickling brine in a round of Picklebacks – shot of whiskey followed by a shot of pickle juice.  I thought the pickle juice was a good chaser, but some of my friends begged to differ...

These dill pickles are great with a big piece of veal schnitzel (as you can see above, I also made some sauerkraut, which went well with the schnitty - I'll write about this soon).  I've also been told that similar pickles are served, finely sliced, on top of schnitzel in Switzerland.  They're also delicious on the side of a classic cheese toasty, or alongside leftover Christmas ham or turkey.  But true Jarheads would eat them on their own! 

Dill Pickle Recipe

What you need:

• 1.5 kg of Kirby pickling cucumbers;
• 2 cups of apple cider vinegar;
• 8 cloves of garlic, peeled and sliced (I like them to be really garlicky);
• 1 teaspoon of fennel seeds;
• 2 tablespoons of coriander seeds;
• 1/4 cup of sea salt;
• 1 bunch of dill;
• 1 tablespoon of peppercorns;
• 6 cups of water.  

The pickling:

1. Place the water in a pot and on a low heat, dissolve the salt, peppercorns; coriander seeds, and fennel seeds.  Set this brine aside and allow to cool.
2. Wash and scrub the cucumbers well, making sure there's no spines.  
3. Slice off a thin round near the blossom end of the cucumbers.   The blossom end contains an enzyme that can lead to the softening of the pickles.  
4. Place the prepared cucumbers in a large plastic container and then cover in the cooled salt brine. Also add in a handful of dill. You can weigh down the cucumbers with a plate to ensure they're submerged.  Leave them in the brine for 24 hours in the fridge or at room temperature.  
5. 24 hours later, measure out 2 cups of brine and put it aside.  Sieve the rest of the brine and save the peppercorns and seeds.
6. Then, pack the cucumbers into your jars.  As you pack them in, add in a sprig or two of dill in each jar.  
7. Mix the vinegar and the reserved brine in a pot and bring to the boil.  Add in the sliced garlic.
8. Pour the boiling hot pickling brine over the pickles.  
9. For long term shelf storage you can process the jars in a boiling water bath for ten minutes.