Lacto-fermented pickled vegetables

I’ve admired and enjoyed pickles for many years, but I only recently got into making my own lacto-fermented pickles at home.  Pickled vegetables of all kinds add spark as an ingredient and can also stand on their own as an appetizer or side dish that contrasts with other strongly flavored foods like cheese or meat. Pickles are notoriously hard to pair with wines, but I try to keep sour foods in mind when I think about the style of wine I want to make.

Upfront I should emphasize that I am relatively new to this craft, and I don’t want to come across as a master. I first got excited about pickles eating at Lebanese and Armenian restaurants in Los Angeles, where pink pickled turnips were an almost universal accompaniment (I’m looking at you, Sunnin). When I left Los Angeles, I messed around making vinegar-based pickled turnips, with and without beets for color. These quick vinegar pickles are tasty, but as time went on and nostalgia intensified, I wanted to get closer to the source.

This article sums up the techniques I’ve arrived at after about a year of experimentation, and includes the lessons I’ve learned along the way; I’ve written it with the beginner in mind. I should also say that I don’t have anything to offer about the purported health benefits of fermented foods. I just like the way lacto-fermented vegetables taste. I also don't have a whole lot to say about putting up natural pickles for extended storage, but I haven’t had any go off on me when I store them under refrigeration for the couple of months needed to get through a batch—the key is to make sure the brine always covers the vegetables.

Summary and general principles

I use standard wide-mouth Ball/Kerr Mason jars, fermenting usually in the half gallon size and storing away in quart and pint jars, with the last dregs in half pint narrow-mouth jam jars. A half-gallon batch usually fits in one quart plus one pint jar with a little left for eating on the day I repack.  The Ball/Kerr lids don’t hold up terribly well to the acidity of pickles, so I put a layer of plastic wrap between the glass lip and the metal lid before tightening on the outer ring; it’s still best not to have the jars brimming full though, because they will weep brine if a little more carbon dioxide builds up.

The basic technique I use is my own riff on the process advocated by Lukas and Peterson in The Farmhouse Culture Guide to Fermenting.  I don’t do everything the same way they do, but I’m happy with my results so far. See the end of the article for a guide to further reading.

While most vegetables do harbor some population of naturally occurring lactobacillus, I prefer to inoculate my fermentations with brine from an earlier (but recent) successful fermentation.  Using this technique, I get reasonably rapid acidification, and nice, clean flavors.

I don’t understand this chemically, but cabbage seems to be basically perfect for fermentation.  It has great flavor and texture, it ferments rapidly, it sours strongly, and it makes a relatively neutral brine that is useful for inoculating subsequent fermentations.

Salt and acid are the key preservatives in fermented pickles.  Salt does a lot of the work to select for the right microbes, and the acidity produced by these microbes does the rest of the work.  Many leafy green vegetables are also generally very high in nitrates, which prevent the growth of botulism spores—this is why all the “uncured” ham and bacon contains a load of dehydrated celery juice; this adds enough nitrate to cure the meat but doesn’t have to appear as a chemical additive on the ingredient label.

I like to get things started with commercial kimchi.  Kimchi cultures seem to produce more acid more quickly than sauerkraut cultures, and reasonably rapid acidification is important for getting clean flavors and good shelf life. If you want your pickles super sour, you can make up a 2% salt solution in vinegar and replace some of the fermentation brine with this salted vinegar when you repack the pickles for storage. This is also a good trick if you want to drain off brine to start a new fermentation, but you don’t end up with any spare brine when you’re packing up a batch. I do this occasionally, but in general the vinegar makes the pickles less versatile and harder to pair with wines.

Equipment and ingredients to have on hand

• non-reactive (stainless, glass, ceramic) bowls

• large-mouth mason jars with lids and rings

• a set of fermentation weights sized for the mouth of your jars (glass weights work well, as do the spring-based “weights” sold by Ball/Kerr with their vented plastic lids)

• plastic wrap

• rubber bands

• salt—anything non-iodized that is meant for human consumption will do (sea salt, kosher salt, whatever)

• a good source of non-chlorinated water (tap water through a carbon filter is usually OK unless you are dealing with high mineral, or especially high metal content well water)

• a scale that you trust in +/- 1 gram increments

• a jar of fresh, actively fermenting commercial kimchi for your first batch

• a bunch of vegetables worth pickling; start with cabbage

The Ur-pickle

To make a first pickle, and harvest starter brine for subsequent fermentations, get a nice, very pale organic cabbage, about 2lb, and a relatively fresh jar of refrigerated, non-pasteurized commercial kimchi that has clearly built up pressure under its lid (this means the lactobacillus is still very active).

Peel layers off the cabbage until you like what you see, then peel off one more outer layer and set it aside for later.  Quarter, core, and shred the cabbage into 1/8 to 1/4 inch strips.  Weigh your cabbage shreds and add 2% salt; if you have 1000g = 1kg of cabbage, add 20g salt.  It takes about 2lb or 1kg of cabbage per quart/liter of fermenter space.

Let the salted cabbage start to weep juices into the bowl.  Get your hands super clean.  Like clean enough that you’d let someone else eat off them.  With your impeccably clean hands, start squeezing and generally messing up the cabbage.  The goal is to help it get really juicy, so that it will cover itself in its own brine once you pack it onto the jar.

Once the cabbage is pretty juicy, add a few tablespoons of the juice from your jar of kimchi.  Pack the cabbage and all its juices into a perfectly clean quart mason jar and press each handful down so that the brine keeps rising to the top.  Once you are about an inch from the top of the jar, cut a disc from that outer leaf of cabbage you saved earlier; make it just a little too big to fit into the jar without bending.  Finesse this in, cupped side down, so that it acts as a pusher plate to keep the shredded cabbage under brine.  Poke a little hole in the center and put in the fermentation weight. Brine should just cover the pusher leaf.  Cover the jar with two layers of plastic wrap and secure this temporary lid with a tight rubber band.

Let this ferment at room temperature (55-75 F) out of direct sunlight for a week to two weeks (cooler-longer, warmer-shorter).  I like to keep my active fermentation in a tray that can catch escaping juices.  As you observe the fermentation, you only need to intervene if the fermentation expels so much brine that the vegetables are no longer covered.  Should this happen, you can add 2-3% salt brine to replace enough of the lost liquid to keep the vegetables submerged.  I have only ever had to do this on day 3 or 4 of a fermentation, which tend to be the most active, and the real trick is just slightly under-filling your fermenter so that there is room in the jar for a little trapped carbon dioxide to cause expansion. (You can sometimes get away with less headspace if you use a stainless steel spring-type fermentation “weight”.)

The gases emitted will have a funky, cabbagey, and sour smell, but it should not smell putrid.  If it smells like, uh…, sauerkraut, you’re probably on track.

When the fermentation dies down to almost no active bubbling, you can repack the cabbage in smaller containers for refrigerated storage and harvest some extra brine to get your next pickles going.  This first batch will have a little of the peppery/radishy kimchi flavor from the brine you used for inoculation, but subsequent ferments will have little to none of this character unless you start making kimchi (which you can—and perhaps should—do).

Pickle everything

Once this first fermentation is done, you can use the brine as a starter culture to make a wide range of pickles.  Following most presentations of the process, I think it makes sense to distinguish between fermentations that are self-brining (like the sauerkraut just described) and fermentations that require added brine.  The process for self-brining pickles is basicaly the same as the one described for the starter sauerkraut above.  The process for added-brine pickles is generically just a tiny bit more complicated, though the size of the vegetables or vegetable chunks can sometimes raise unique challenges.  Also, if flavor is the point and not texture/presentation, you can usually make a shredded vegetable pickle from almost any vegetable if that makes things easier.

I like garlic, dill, and chili pepper as the main seasonings in many pickles, but other combinations work well too.  Caraway, coriander seed, allspice, mustard seed, black pepper, and fennel seed all come quickly to mind as possible additional or alternative seasonings.

I happen to have horseradish and grapes growing in my yard, so I usually use a horseradish leaf or a grape leaf as the follower plate on top of the vegetables, below the glass weight.  Cabbage leaves and discs of turnip work really well for this as well, and often times you don’t even really need a pusher plate if the vegetables you’re fermenting aren’t super finely shredded (and if they are, you probably have some leaves you can use).

Some particularly tasty self-brining shredded vegetable ferments:

• Just cabbage—Napa, savoy, red, green, whatever (I avoid greener outer leaves and other dark green cabbage family vegetables; these seem to me to produce a really swampy aroma)

• Cabbage, beet, turnip, carrot, garlic

• Red cabbage, beet, dill, garlic (very good with mustard on hot dogs)

• Cabbage, carrot, radish, garlic, ginger, chili pepper

• Cucumber (remove seeds, slice into half-moons), dill, garlic, optionally chili pepper

• Cabbage, sliced green tomatoes, dill, and garlic

Some particularly tasty chunky vegetable added-brine ferments:

• Turnips with a few beets to turn the whole mess pink, and optionally a couple cloves of garlic

• Green beans (whole) with dill and garlic or fava beans (peeled) with garlic (green beans especially sometimes take well to a little shot of vinegar as you repack them in smaller jars for refrigerated storage; I also don’t inoculate new ferments with brine leftover from pickling beans)

• Onion slices, fennel slices, and chili peppers, with or without garlic

• Onion slices

• Cherry tomatoes, dill, and garlic

• Cucumber, dill, garlic, and optional chili peppers

• Yellow summer squash quarters/spears, dill, garlic, chili pepper

• Carrots, garlic, lemon or orange zest

• Beets or beets and cabbage wedges (mix this on the wetter side so you have lots of extra brine to mix into soda water)

If you like a firmer pickle, you can add a small amount of calcium chloride to help the vegetables retain a firm texture. I find that I generally get good texture without this step, but that could be an effect of my local water, etc. You’ll have to dial this in for yourself.

In general I peel root vegetables and cut them into 1/4 to 1/2 inch wide sticks/batons.  Unless you shred them very finely, peppers are often so springy that they don’t self-brine well and need added liquid to stay under the brine.  When chili pepper is a seasoning and not the bulk of a fermentation I often use dried chilis from the previous year in my garden.  Aleppo-type peppers seem to work especially well in many contexts, as do Padron peppers that have been left too long on the plant and have become too spicy to eat whole.  Thai peppers and Habanero-type peppers can work as well; they contribute a bit more kick, but also contribute aromas that are especially nice in certain combinations (carrot-habanero, for example, is particularly fine).

For pickling it is always better to use fresh dill or fresh dill flowers.  Dried dill ends up floating on top of the brine and makes a raft that can harbor mold.  Better to use an alternative flavor than to use dried dill in most circumstances. In general I use whole spices in pickling, rather than ground spices, for the same reason.

General procedure for self-brining vegetable ferments

This recipe is written with a half-gallon fermenter in mind, but I’ve also listed measurements for quart-sized fermentations in [square brackets].

Ingredients:

• 1900-2000g vegetables after peeling and trimming [900-1000g]

• 40g salt [20g] (this is about 2% by weight)

• Something to use as a follower/pusher plate, like a cabbage leaf, a disc of turnip, or a horseradish leaf

• 50-100ml brine from a recent successful fermentation [30-60ml]

Process:

1. Clean surfaces, bowls, vessels, and tools that you plan to use.

2. Prepare your vegetables by rinsing, peeling, and shredding to your desired size.  I usually go for 1/8 inch shreds, but for vegetables that you know get juicy easily, you can go larger (e.g., cucumber). 

3. Salt the vegetables and let them get juicy; encourage things along with hands or fists as needed.  When the juices start to weep out, you can add your starter brine.

4. Pack the jar to within about 1.5 inches of the jar lip, pressing firmly with each fistful to get the brine to rise.

5. Insert your pusher plate (cabbage leaf, turnip disc, etc.) and install your fermentation weight.  If you’re using a glass weight, cover with two layers of plastic wrap, held in place with a tight rubber band.

6. Ferment at room temperature on a tray out of the direct sun for 7-15 days, (cooler longer, warmer shorter).

7. When fermentation slows to a crawl, you don’t have active bubbling, and the acidity is to your liking, repack the pickles in jars with weights and a layer of plastic wrap between the jar and the metal lid.

8. Snack on the extra, and save a jam jar of brine in the fridge to start the next batch within the next couple weeks.

Store the pickles refrigerated, and repack into smaller jars as you work through the batch to minimize excess headspace in the jars. As you repack or start eating through the jars, make sure the vegetables are always fully submerged in brine when you put them away.  I’ve never had a batch spoil when treated this way, but that shouldn’t be taken as a guarantee.  Pickles will get softer as you store them, so if you like lots of crunch, eat them relatively early.

General procedure for added-brine ferments

This recipe is written with a half-gallon fermenter in mind, but I’ve also listed measurements for quart-sized fermentations in [square brackets].

Ingredients:

• 900-1000g vegetables and flavorings/herbs/spices/garlic/etc. after peeling and trimming [400-500g]

• 40g salt [20g] (about 2% by weight of water + vegetables)

• Chlorine-free water (probably about a liter [500ml])

• Something to use as a follower/pusher plate, like a cabbage leaf, horseradish leaf, disc of turnip, etc.

• 100-150 ml brine from a recent successful fermentation [50-100ml]

A note on quantity: sometimes you can pack more vegetables in your jars. Do it if you can, but don’t increase the salt; the salt Is based on 2% of the total vegetable + water weight, and that doesn’t change if you add more vegetables and less water.

Process:

1. Prepare your vegetables by peeling and chopping to your desired size.  Unless you’re an experienced fermenter, I recommend cutting cucumbers into 1 inch logs or long spears (don’t peel cucumbers).  This still gives you an identifiable cucumber pickle, but it removes most of the potential for problems that crop up when you are working with large whole vegetables.

2. If your chunks have a lot of square corners and flat sides, toss the prepared vegetables with salt and calcium chloride if you’re using it before you pack the jar.  This ensures that salt gets evenly distributed throughout the mass of vegetables.  If you’re using tubular vegetables or vegetables that don’t have long straight cut sides, you can add the salt later.

3. Layer or pack the vegetables and any flavorings into the fermenter pretty tightly.

4. Add the salt (if you haven’t already) and a little bit of water.  Then add the starter brine.  Top with water to just over the level of the vegetables.  Finish with your follower/pusher plate and weight, making sure you have enough brine to cover the follower.

5. If you’re using glass weights, cover the jar with two layers of plastic wrap and secure with a rubber band.  Ferment at room temperature [55-75F]. Since the vegetables are in larger chunks and the microbes and salt will need longer to evenly transform the chunks to their core, it will tend to take longer for the fermentation to complete: 10 days to three weeks, depending on temperature and how quickly the vegetables break down.  Softer vegetables tend to go faster than harder vegetables.

6. Repack as with self-brining vegetable ferments.  You will likely be able to get the pickles into a smaller volume than with self brining ferments, since the finished pickles have more give than the raw vegetables did when you initially packed the fermenter. Because of this…

7. You will likely have extra brine left over. Save some in a jam jar in the fridge to start your next fermentation, and when you have even more than you need for that, make a tasty beverage by pouring brine and sparkling water over ice. Sometimes this is nice just as is, and sometimes it is better with a little sugar and/or lemon juice.

General procedure for pepper paste and hot sauce

Ingredients:

• 600-800g peppers (stemmed, optionally seeded, chopped small)

• 0-200g other aromatics (garlic, ginger, etc.)

• 30g salt

• A green cabbage leaf to use as a follower/pusher plate

• 50-100ml brine from a recent successful fermentation

• 0-200ml chlorine-free water

Use a 1 quart jar and proceed generally as for added brine ferments. Because this will have much less added liquid, don’t add any water until you’ve added your salt and the starter brine—it may turn out that you don’t even need any additional water.

After fermentation you can puree the whole slurry to make a fine paste, or you can use it as is if you pre-chopped the ingredients very fine already.  If you just chop fine, it will be sort of like sambal olek in texture, or you can make it more like sriracha if you really go to town on it in a blender.  Ether way, try to tap out the bubbles and store it refrigerated.  The extra salt will keep this stable for longer than a typical pickle.

To make thinner Louisiana-style hot sauce, puree the fermented pepper slurry very aggressively, strain it to remove any remaining shreds of pepper skin, and add 250-500ml white (or other) vinegar.  Adjust salt and seasonings as you like, but avoid adding sugar or honey, since this will kick the fermentation off again with unpredictable results.  Especially with the added vinegar, this should be stable in the fridge for a long time. It will separate unless you add some sort of hydrocolloid, but I don’t mind giving the jar a shake, so I’ve never bothered with gums and thickeners.

When the less spicy mid-summer jalapeños are ripe, you turn them into a very basic hot sauce by seeding/de-veining before shredding and fermenting as above, then pureeing fine and adding a bit of vinegar. This will add spark to foods but isn’t hot enough to get in the way of wine.

If you happen to strain after pureeing a chili pepper ferment, you can dehydrate the remaining solids into salty chili flakes for topping pizza and popcorn. I’m not sure where I picked up this idea, but it has a distinctly @brad_leone feel to it.

Further Reading

• Sandor Katz, The Art of Fermentation, Chelsea Green, 2012. Katz relates the big ideas of vegetable fermentation better than anyone else I’ve read, and indeed I’ve learned more about vegetable fermentation from this book than from any other, but this is not necessarily the best place to start. (Find this book — follow the link to worldcat.org and see if you can get it from your local library or purchase from AbeBooks/Amazon/Better World)

• Lukas and Peterson, The Farmhouse Culture Guide To Fermenting, Ten Speed Press, 2019. This is the place to start. (Find this book)

• Shockey and Shockey, Fermented Vegetables, Storey Publishing, 2014. There are some great ideas fo flavor combination here, but the main thing I found useful was the troubleshooting guide at the end which includes pictures of various things that can go wrong, how to fix them, and when there isn’t a good fix, advice about when to toss a batch and start over. With the process I detailed above, I should say, I’ve only tossed one batch, and it was something that I just let go at room temperature for far too long (a pepper fermentation that I started before the grape harvest began and didn’t revisit till after all the wine was in barrels—like six weeks). (Find this book)