I love half sour pickles. I’ve been eating them since I was a kid and find them to be vastly superior to any vinegar laced pickle. So I tried my hand at making them. I used the recipe linked below as the basis for my pickle making adventure. I had my first one last night after four days in the refrigerator. Overall I’m pretty happy with my first effort.
A few notes:
I toasted the seeds before grinding them.
They could have been a bit less salty. I think the issue here is that the cukes were pretty large and I could only fit three in each jar. I need to find a better vessel where I can get the right solution to pickle ratio.
The skin was still slightly bitter. I’m not sure if this was just because the cukes were fairly large or because they were grocery store bought or what. Maybe they just need a couple more days?
For a crunchy pickle that stays crunchy slice off the flower end of the cucumber. There is an emzyme in that end that causes the pickle to go soft. Dill weed doesn’t add much. Use dill heads or dill seed.
This recipe is identical to my dill pickle recipe except no bay leaf and I like the vinegar flavor and add 1/2C to 2qts of water. I like to experiment with different spices, adding them and/or leaving others out. Caraway seed, red pepper flakes…
The pickle crisp shown in the recipe is basically alum but you don’t need it if you snip the ends.
That linked recipe is almost identical to the one I’m using from the 2nd Avenue Deli cookbook. I used Persian cukes and left the jars out for 5 days to get full sours. They’re in the fridge now… and pretty darned good.
